Ani and the Armenian Questionb
So, leaving the dreadfulness of Kars behind us, we arrived, finally, at our ultimate destination- the ancient city of Ani.
As has been mentioned before, the political landscape of Anatolia has been, in a word, rather fluid. A dozen or so major empires have held sway here, from the Persians to the Ottomans, but each empire's apogee was followed by a decline. During periods of decline minor states took the opportunity to grab territory and establish themselves, although their periods of greatness tended to end sharply when the old empires recovered their balance, or new ones arrived on the scene. Most of these "minor kingdoms" are attached to some sort of ethnic group, many of which are still resident either in Anatolia or neighboring territories.
Therein lies the genesis of much of the ethnic discord of today. The states located in the area which stretches from East/Central Europe to the Caucusus mountains are, typically, much less stable than their Western European counterparts, contain far more ethnic groups, and are far loss "modern" in their culture in some respects. Each national group's claims are maximalist in nature, that is to say, they all look back to the point when their particular ethnic kingdom was at the height of its power. Needless to say, these claims are impossible to justify in terms of each other. They are a guarantee of constant strife.
All groups employ versions of history which are distorted and unreal- This includes both Turks, and Armenians. Also, engaging in any sort of dialogue about historical events is useless. Either you swallow completely some particular factions version of events, or you are a craven tool of the other side. Sides, really, as it seems that every ethnic group hates every other ethnic group that it has ever come into contact with. Thus Armenian nationalists fight not only with Turkish nationalists (understandably) but with Georgians, and with anyone else who doesn't wholeheartedly support Greater Armenia. Not to pick too much on Armenia, the demagogues of every other ethnic group are just the same.
We will return to the Armenian question later. For the moment, let us examine the political situation that led to the foundation of Ani, now abandoned, which was once the rival in glory of Constantinople and Baghdad.
By 855 the initial impetus of the Muslim explosion out of the Arabian peninsula had waned. The Abbassids and the Byzantines had worn each other out, and each sought a breathing space to recover. In that void, King Ashot I, of the Bagratid Armenians, carved out a large Armenian state as a buffer between the two.
Bagratid Armenia, image courtesy of Wikimedia
The first capital of Bagratid Armenia was at Kars, but in 961 the seat of the Kingdom was transferred to Ani. Between 961 and 1020 the city reached the height of its size, with a population of between 100,000 and 200,000 people. For this time period, this was gargantuan.
Ani's troubles began after 1020. Two brothers fought each other for the throne of the Bagratids, ignoring resurgent Byzantine power and the threat of marauding Turkish tribes that lay over the horizon. In 1045 the Byzantines gained control of the city, and in 1064 it was conqoured and sacked by the Seljuks.
According to the Arab Historian Al-Gawzi, "The army entered the city, massacred its inhabitants, pillaged and burned it, leaving it in ruins and taking prisoner all those who remained alive...The dead bodies were so many that they blocked the streets; one could not go anywhere without stepping over them. And the number of prisoners was not less than 50,000 souls. I was determined to enter city and see the destruction with my own eyes. I tried to find a street in which I would not have to walk over the corpses; but that was impossible."
The Seljuks were later pushed out by the Georgians (1199), whose rule lasted until the Mongol conquest and sack of the city (1264). Each misfortune made the place smaller and smaller, until the mid 18th century when, having become little more than a village, it was abandoned.
The memory of Ani still lived on in the hearts of Armenian nationalists, however, who sought after the end of the First World War to regain the glory of the Bagratids and take over large parts of Turkish held territory in Eastern Anatolia. The Turkish National Congress ordered a local General, Karim Karabekir, to raze what remained of the city. Fortunately, he mostly ignored this order.
Since the end of WWI, the border, which is literally at Ani (the plateau the city is on ends in a ravine, which is the heavily mined border between Turkey and Armenia) has kept the place relatively off limits. Until a few years ago it was not really open to the public. Even today, it has a forbidding atmosphere, and the wardens of the site issue stern warnings not to photograph across the border, and under no circumstances to attempt to cross.
Anyway, here are some photos.
The modern village outside Ani
Ani, seen from the top of the remaining city walls
The Armenian/Turkish border
Ani was known as "the city of a thousand churches" and many of them still survive in various states of disrepair. Sub Prkich, the Church of the Redeemer, was split in half by lightening in 1955.
Church of the Redeemer
The script found throughout Ani, and which can be seen here on the collapsed section of the Church, is identified by the local guide as an "ancient Seljuk alphabet." This is not the case. It is Armenian, yet another instance of the ridiculousness of extremists historical claims. (many people continue to identify buildings with crosses and images of the apostles carved on them as mosques built by Seljuks).
Wow what an exciting post! Thank you! I enjoyed the latter sets especially, which have a kind of patina, an inertia of life visible in everything - human time and continuity, despite the turmoils of history - which is strongly sensed. But the uniqueness of Istanbul is unchallengable!
Neil
Thanks Niel, I like Istanbul (who doesn't) but the east is in a way far more interesting, mainly because of its resistance, in some respects, to modernity, or at least to its having developed an accommodation to modernity entirely different than our own. Wait until we get to Southeast Anatolia, which (unlike the Northeast) is still relatively highly populated. It is very interesting.
The latest set is just so very interesting and satisfying. You seem to be really excited about this area, and I am nearly as much so just seeing your photographs! Those 1000yr old church ruins are unbelievable, what fantastic props to play with in fashion shots! I must also say how well done many of your people shots are, those ones where the people just stay being what they are.
So, many thanks for bringing this place to us, in some ways a frontier, while yet being so central to the history of Europe and Asia. And thanks for the information you have provided which is so enlarging of the visual experience.lust
Melting Pot or Boiling Cauldron? The following is a bunch of theory that you may, or may not, find interesting. If you are more interested in the pics, feel free to skip it.
Most of the readers of this travel report are, likely, from Europe or North America. The ethnic makeup of these societies is, though many of us are unaware of this, quite different from the vast majority of the rest of the planet.
Not being an ethnologist, I divide these “western” societies into two types; emigrant societies and societies with a hegemonic indigenous group. I am aware that, for academic types or for folks who are well into this sort of thing, these terms may be contentious. Let me explain them.
By emigrant societies I am referring to the New World West- principally the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (and to a lesser extent the UK). These are societies composed of populations who come from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, and who generally replaced (typically violently, but that’s another story) local indigenous populations. These societies are typically socially and geographically dynamic- that is to say, populations tend to intermarry, and to move a lot. They also tend to adopt whatever the local language is and to “Australianize” or Americanize” or whatever the local equivalent is (Brazilianize?). By historical accident, most of these societies are Anglophone, but not all- it doesn’t really matter.
The point of Brazilianizing is that Brazilian identity mostly requires speaking Portuguese, living in Brazil, and exuding a proud and intense but nonspecific national pride. Thus João Waldmann can be a Brazilian nationalist. Often, such as in the USA, it involves enthusiastically adopting a political ideology. The point is that membership of the dominant identity isn’t dependent on factors such as religion, or genetic heritage, and that it is open to all (at least theoretically). These are melting pot societies.
Societies with hegemonic indigenous groups are more common in Western Europe. All Western European societies have immigrants, but there is a “national group” (Germans, Italians, Portuguese, etc.) which are the majority in these states, and are relatively homogenous. Places like France are trickier, but basically the same. Western Europe is important because the European National State System is the Hegemonic State idea throughout the world. This fact is vastly more important, and troubling, than the people who take it for granted (us) might imagine it to be.
It works out well in Western Europe, where the national state was born, than it does in the rest of the world. This is primarily because States in Europe are older than nations. France, for example, existed long before things like literacy, mass communication, official vernacular language, and safe long distance travel. There were lots of languages and ethnic groups in France (Langue d’Oc, Langue d’Oil, Burgundians, etc) but members of these were not necessarily aware of them. Most people in the medieval Kingdom of France were basically aware that there was a King, somewhere, a local Priest, and a Knight who ruthlessly exploited them. They didn’t think much about the fact the they said “oc” instead of “oui,” because there were only two languages- the one normal people spoke, and the magical religious one the priest sometimes said stuff in (latin). Usually even the priest had no idea what he was saying. They didn’t travel much, because of unsafe roads, plague, and the most salient fact that they were illiterate serfs tied to the land who had to work all the time just to (maybe) stay alive.
I am far more concerned witht he fact that this dude is saying "give me your cow and your daughter, or I will kill you", than I am about what particular language he is saying it in.
Over the centuries, before any sort of national consciousness was achieved, the Central State “made” people living in France into Frenchmen- through media such as mass education, literacy, and conscription. Thus, today, the amazing contiguousness between France and the distribution of French people. In the west we think this is normal. It isn’t.
Most states outside Western Europe were huge, ramshackle, imperial, and had no “national project.
Nations were born before nation states, and thus you have states with loads of national groups. This wasn’t much of a problem before the 18th century, because most of these people were peasants who never went further than the next village, and were likely to think of themselves as members of a religious community rather than a national community. Greece is an excellent example. There were people who spoke Greek, and went to a Christian church. There were people who spoke Greek, and went to a Mosque. This was the source of their identity, rather than “Greekness.”
Not that these societies were trouble free. The Ottoman empire was constantly full of groups who had serious problems with the central state. These problems, however, were religious rather than national. Greek speakers who went to the Mosque didn’t usually revolt. Greek speakers who went to church often did. Sometimes people who went to Mosque revolted, but this was usually typical feudal nonsense, like some local robber baron wanting to keep all the taxes, rather than send some to Constantinople.
Ethnic problems began with the rise in power of the Western European states, whose system of social organization (national states, conscript armies, mass education, science, etc.) suddenly allowed these peripheral barbarians to abruptly move into all sorts of places all over the world and set up shop, then take over. Traditional states had to respond in order to survive, and they usually did this by trying to Modernize. Modernization usually meaning Westernization, as elites went off to study things like sciences at Heidelberg and coming back with all sorts of whack Western ideas, like the nation state. The non-elites (Armenian and Greek diasporas) for example, were also coming back to places like the Ottoman empire, with the same ideas. Hilarity ensued, naturally. Particularly since the “homelands” of these ethnic/national groups were hopelessly interpenetrated. Keep on mind that the rulers of these traditional states weren’t keen on all aspects of the modern idea. The Sultan was a big fan of properly drilled troops and modern artillery. Parliaments? Not so much. With this new found national consciousness, however, it was quickly discovered that national tradition could bolster the traditional as well as the national, particularly if directed against a “traditional” enemy.
The maelstrom of inter-ethnic violence that erupted in Anatolia in the beginning of the 20th century was the result of this perfect storm of cultural collision, misunderstanding, and cynical manipulation. It’s important to understand this background in order to make sense of what at first seems like entirely senseless bloodshed.
Kurds and Armenians
Let me open this section with a disclaimer, lest the ravening hordes of Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish supernationalist trolls who infest teh internets find it and immediately fill it with all sorts of nonsense about how I am a craven apologist for [insert ethnic group here] and am therefore, an excretory orifice of the highest caliber.
I love Turkey, and its people. All of them- Turks, Kurds, and Armenians. Even the Greeks. That's how Cosmopolitan. broadminded, and generally awesome that I am. I received kindness and hospitality of an unparalleled nature from all of them, at all times.
That being said, I find their total lack of charity towards each other to be irritating. They would all be much better off if they stopped worrying about each others ethnic claims, and started working together to make Turkey even better and more awesomer than it is today.
The first step necessary to achieve this is honesty, particularly about the past. I will deal with all sorts of ethnic nonsense in this section, but particularly with the Turkish brand of nonsense. Not because the Turks are worse than the others, but because they are the dominant power in the state. Thus their nonsense is the official nonsense, which is the worst kind of nonsense.
The Armenian Genocide
East Anatolia has basically no Armenians in it today. There are two explanations for this.
Explanation #1- The Armenian Story
Armenians allege that, beginning in 1915, The Ottoman government, led by a trio of clowns called Enver, Talaat, and Jemal decided to wipe out Armenians in Eastern Turkey. Because why? Because *%^$ Armenians, that's why.
They achieved this by systematically assassinating the intelligentsia in Constantinople, and then by uprooting the entire population of Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, killing loads of them outright, reducing their population centers to rubble, and sending millions of them on death marches to camps in Syria. This was all arranged by the triumvirate of Enver, Talaat, and Jemal and was a systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian nation from the face of the earth- the Twentieth centuries first genocide.
Explanation #2- The Turkish Story
The official Turkish response to these claims is basically a hostile and defensive silence, and denial. Keep in mind that "insulting Turkishness" is a crime in Turkey, and that can be "liberally" interpreted to include just about anything, like attempting to address the issue reasonably.
The unofficial Turkish response to these claims is pretty various- it can be boiled down to three strategies:
A) The "incidents of 1915" were unfortunate, but the numbers are exaggerated, and don't count as genocide. The main killers were famine, disease, and the chaos of war.
Nothing happened, and if it did, the Armenians were asking for it, as they joined with the Russians and massacred loads of innocent Turkish farmers. The Armenians who were transported were moved for reasons of their own safety. According to an typical source:
It is a fact that the Armenians were subjected to many similar replacements in the past for treason against the states under whose hegemonies they were living. the Sasanites moved 70.000 Armenians to Iran in 379 AD, the Byzantines relocated 40.000 East Anatolian Armenians in Sivas and Kayseri in 1025, the Mameluks sent 10.000 to Egypt, the Iranians dispersed 24.000 into the country and the Russians invading Crimea sent thousands of Armenians into the Siberian steppes. [
Anyway, it was the Kurds who did it.
C) There are no such people as Armenians. These are not the droids you're looking for.
Explanation #3- The Real Story
The facts are these. The official Armenian population (according to Ottoman census data, as unreliable as it is) before 1915 was around 1.2 million. After the war it was around 250,000. It is very likely that the real number of Armenians was higher, and that between 1 and one and a half million died. Some of these people did leave Turkey after the war (for obvious reasons) but the missing million didn't all leave. You also can't force march a million and a half civilians through steppe and desert in the middle of winter, without adequate provisions, and act all surprised when they start dropping like flies. Particularly the kids.
This wholesale death was certainly, if not systematic (the Ottoman empire wasn't really capable of doing anything systematically, even collecting taxes) then a happy side-effect of population removal that was unlamented by the triumvirate.
Armenians did indeed carry out atrocities against Turkish civilians- there was a revolutionary group based in Russian Armenia called the Dashnaqs that would raid across the border with the tacit consent and support of the Russians, who didn't care much for the Ottomans. Did this lead to the claimed "reign of terror?" Probably not, as the Armenian were too weak to threaten the wholesale destruction of the Turkish population. It is certainly no excuse for killing a million civilians for whom the government has responsibility, including women and children.
So both sides need to fess up. First, the Ottoman government behaved atrociously. And the Dashnaq types were no angels. Nevertheless, if what happened isn't genocide, then what is it? If we give it a different name, does that make it any less evil?
The official nonsense
A monument to "genocide" outside Ani. Genocide carried out, of course, by Armenians.
Ancient Seljuk inscriptions. Why is there a cross there, and why does this script look very much like modern Armenian? Why are you asking such awkward questions?
Obvious churches are constantly identified as Seljuk Mosques. All references to Armenians in local history are ruthlessly suppressed. I am sure that folks who wish to mark me as a pro-Armenian zealot will point out that I have included no pictures of Official Armenian Nonsense. That is because I was in Turkey. In Armenia proper there is plenty of it, including a homage in the Armenian Military Pantheon to fallen commandos of the ASALA (Armenian Secret Army to Liberate Armenia) an especially unsavoury group of terrorists who carried out several bold action in defense of oppressed Armenians, such as blowing up a bunch of French people at Orly airport in 1983. Nice.
There are, however, rays of hope in all of this mess. First off, the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople steadfastly condemns, and has always condemned, groups such as the ASALA. Additionally, in the Kars tourist office, pictures the various Armenian churches of the region, which used to be prominently displayed with plaques identifying them as mosques, have had signs taped over the word "Mosque" on the labels, replacing it with the word "Church."
Perhaps we are on the road to a reconciliation that will allow these two people, of such warmth and hospitality, to express the better angels of their nature, particularly towards each other.
Ani to Mount Ararat
Enough of the Bloviating and Speechifying. Let's return to the trip report.
Our next destination was the sleepy town of Dogubeyazit (East Beyazit, commonly called just "Beyazit.") which is nestled a few kilometers from the Iranian border, under the shadow of the famous Mount Ararat, final resting place of Noah's Ark.
First we returned to Kars. I grabbed a quick Doner from a stand where the proprieter took obvious delight in feeding an American. He kept singining "Amerika, Amerika, Hey Ho, cowboy-o!"
We took a minibus from Kars to the town of Igdir, about 2 hours and 12 lira away. At Igdir, one can catch another minibus to Beyazit. Joining us at Kars was Yavuz (a name meaning "Fierce, or Grim)- a lovely Kurdish man who had spent a few years working at a tourist resort in Antalya, on the Azure Coast, and thus spoke relatively decent English and whose cheery disposition belied his name. We spent a few hours talking to Yavuz about life, particularly his farm near Igdir, where he grows lettuce and tomatoes. Like all Kurdish men, he sported a mustache of extreme masculinity. I don't believe I saw a single post-pubescent Kurdish male without such a luxurious pornstache, and the younger Kurdish boys were desperately trying to grow them, with various rates of success.
Kurdistan, land of Facial Hair
Yavuz has, like all Kurds apparently, and uncle in Berlin.
He taught us a few words in Kurdish, such as "Thank you" (Spas), which we alter used to the amazement and delight of the locals. Basically everyone in this region is Kurdish. When arriving at Igdir, we realized that the bus stop for Beyazit was about a mile away. Yavuz hefted Ms. Justiceiro's extremely heavy bag on his shoulder, and walked a mile out of his way to show us where the bus was. It is right across from the bicycle shop.
We were, by the way, the only tourists here of any kind. People constantly stopped to stare at us, although not unkindly. Waiting for the bus to leave, we once again got tea and were unable to pay for it.
En route to Beyazit, we had a short stopover in a town called Digor. Digor is basically a palookaville in the middle of nowhere, Kurdistan. Keep in mind that I am basically weird here for a number of reasons; firstlz, I am a gavur in a land with few tourists. Also, I am a largish dude. Thirdly, I am rolling fully strapped with my cotton carrier.
Your faithfull narrator, fully strapped
Without camera mounted, the cotton carrier looks much like body armor. Which is an element of its awesomeness, in my opinion. A dickensesque street urchin type spied my breastplate, and asked me, to satisfy the growing crowd of Kurdish kids, if I was a policeman (Polis). I responded that I was a Turist. "Terrorist!"They exclaimed, eyes wide. Yavuz came to my defense. "Not terrorist! Turist!" This caused much relief.
When we finally reached Dogubeyazit (called "doh-oo-beyah-zeet" or simply "Doggy Biscuit" by the Gavur) we checked in at the hotel Tehran. 30 lira (15 euro) per night, free wifi that was actually reliable, and laundry service- 2 euro per kilo. It was wonderful to finally have unambiguously clean clothing.
The hotel Tehran also has a rooftop breakfast cafe, from whence this view:
It was in Beyazit that we discovered that Turkey was in the throes of an election. The main signs of this are party sponsored street parties and an increased police presence.
Not to get back on the ethnic soapbox again, but Kurds aren't the most popular people in Turkey. Some ultrantionalists try more Jedi mind tricks and claim that they aren't really Kurds, but "mountain Turks" who have "forgotten" their true identity. Speaking a few words of Kurdish will heartily encourage these careworn but friendly people. Give it a try.
We were in Beyazit to see two things, the Isshak Pasha Palace, and mount Ararat. This was one of about 5 photos that I had planned to take, specifically, in my mind. Particularly the Sarayi with Ararat in the background. Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating and we never did see the top of Ararat (it was cloudy, and Ararat is 5000 meters high).
Nevertheless, after a good nights sleep, we trekked the six kilometers up the hill from Beyazit to the palace of Ishak Pasha.
Beyazit is only a few kilometers from the Iranian border, and has always stood astride the silk road, which passes through an extremely narrow defile here. Thus, whoever controls the defile stands to make quite a profit on lodging, feeding, and taxing travellers on that road.
The desolate landscape around Beyazit
This route has always been important. 3,000 years ago it was held by the Urartians, a successor to the Hittite kingdom, who built a huge fortress guarding the pass, which can still be seen today.
ancient Urartian fortress
Later, the town came to be populated by Armenians and Georgians, and fell to the Ottomans in 1514.
the local Bey began to construct the palace in 1685, and it was completed in 1784 by his illustrious descendant, Ishak (Isaac), by then the family have risen in rank from Bey (locally important dude) to Pasha (really important dude). Useless for defense, it is basically a pleasure palace.
The Ishak Pasha Sarayi, with Ararat not visible
Further up the road once can see the Iranian border. On the way up, we passed an extremely large and vicious dog. After much barking and posturing, he lunged at my faithful traveling companion and prepared to bite her. I had earlier palmed a sizable rock, however, and flung it near him. On the way back down, still proud master of his domain, he studiously pretended not to notice us.
The dining hall of the palace
library
Mosque, with women gallery above
old Armenian graveyard outside the Sarayi
Ishak Pasha displayed a respect and appreciation for all his subjects that the later Turkish Republic occasionally lacked. He incorporated traditional Ottoman, Georgian, and Armenian themes int he construction of the palace.
Courtyard of the Sarayi
Walking down the hill, we heard two very weird stories.
First, we encountered a British tourist, who had just been expelled from Iran. He had spent a month there, and when he went to the local city hall to extend his visa, he and his Irish traveling companion were detained and interrogated for two days. Apparently the secret service thought he was a spy. They queried him relentlessly about where he had been around the world- particularly America.
He stated, truthfully (a mistake, I think) that he had been to France a dozen times or so. Why so many times to France? Surely, he was a spy. They couldn't seem to grasp that going from Belgium (where he lives) to France is like going from NYC to Jersey City. You don't need a passport. Especially if you are a spy. He reported the following dialogue:
Iranian Policeman (IP): Have you been to America?
British Tourist (BT): uhh, Yes. Yes I have.
IP: Where!
BT: Florida.
IP: When?
BT: Hmm. Let me think... I was twelve, so... I don't know. I was twelve.
IP: Why did you go?
BT: I was 12. My mother took me.
IP: Why did she go?
BT: It was Florida. We went to Disneyland.
IP: What is this "Disneyland?" YOU ARE A SPY!
After the two days of "interviews" they gave him 72 hours to leave the country. Needless to say, he left faster than that.
As we walked down the hill back to Beyazit, we passed the enormous military base on the outskirts of the city. I wanted to photograph it, you know, for the lulz, but the Turkish military isn't aware of the lulz and they don't look kindly at the photographing of military assets (normally relaxed, this is one area where they are distinctly not relaxed, so don't even think about it). Let me point out though, that there were dozens of heavy battle tanks ready for immediate service against, I suppose, Iran. It was awesome, all lined up and ready to roll, and unfortunately under the dour eye of guards in machine gun nests everywhere. The base is bigger than the city.
As we were strolling, some dude in a Turkish military uniform shouted "Oi!" at us. You heard right. "Oi!," not "Hello" or "merhaba." Specifially, "Oi! Where are you lot from?" in a broad Midlands accent.
We walked over to the fence and had one of the most interesting conversations of my life with him. He was 46 years old, and had been living in England since he was about 6 years old. He was now a British citizen, but still had family in Turkey, and had visited a few times during his youth. His current girlfriend suggested a holiday in Antalya to him, and it seemed a good idea. Tucked away soemwhere in hsi drawer he had his old Turkish passport, and decided to use it instead of his British one, as Brits have to pay the usual 20 pound Visa fee. Use the Turkish passport, save twenty pounds, good idea, right?
Not a good idea.
Turns out that the Turkish state regards all people holding Turkish passports as Turkish citizens (naturally). And all Turkish citizens are liable for six months of military service, usually when you are 18. Well, our new friend, living in England, had not done his military service. Up until his teens, this hadn't been a problem, but when they swiped his passport at the Antalya airport, a red flag came up on the computer screen. He was immediately arrested, given a haircut, issued a set of battle dress fatigues, enrolled in the Turkish army, and sent to Beyazit to spend six months basically digging ditches. Apparently, all the draft dodgers get sent o Beyazit, as it is considered too far from anywhere to run away from. One of his unfortunate companions was a 52 year old Bank president back in England. I asked him if he couldn't "baksheesh" his way out of it, and he replied, with a sad face, that unfortunately the Turkish Army is apparently incorruptible in this respect, which is good under most circumstances, but not this particular one.
He eventually had to leave and dig more ditches or something, so we went back to the hotel, and dinner.
One of the best threads I've seen in this Forum. Outstanding photography clap
Harry http://behret.smugmug.com/NANPA member How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
you know, I knew someone who had a similar "Iran" episode to the one you describe the British tourist had. it happened to him the year before last
you know it's not always possible to discern the point of the stubbornness of interethnic hate. I once met the mother of a son whose mutilated dead body had been mailed back home to her by his murderers in another ethnic group
Dogubeyazit to Lake Van
We stayed an extra, unplanned day in Beyazit hoping for the weather to clear, but sand and mist in the high atmosphere continued to obscure Mount Ararat, and there was still much left to see, so we decided to continue on in the direction of Lake Van.
Before leaving, however, I was set upon obtaining a carpet. This has become sort of an accidental tradition for me, every time I visit a Muslim country (one that makes carpets at least, of which all the ones I have visited do) I try to obtain a relatively inexpensive ruglet as a reminder of our journey. Usually I get a small one, because they are cheaper and easier to carry.
Buying real Turkish carpets can set you back quite a lot, particularly if you are in Istanbul. There are more tourists and wealthier western buyers, the locals have more money, and the carpets have already passed through the hands of a number of middlemen, each dipping their beak.
If you happen to be in the East of Anatolia, I recommend obtaining your carpet here, and Dogubeyazit is probably the best place. There are enough tourists who come here (for Mt. Ararat) to mean that there is a decent and varied supply, and the purveyors thereof likely speak Anglish and/or German. The tourists, however, are sufficiently scance, either reigiously inclined, hippyish, or simply cheap (that would be me) to make the insane markups of Istanbul impractical.
We went to a shop called the "Local Crafts Store." It is located on the road that leads up to the Ishak Pasha Sarayi (the only road leaving the town towards Iran) about 100 meters before the city ends abruptly. You really can't miss it, it is on the right.
Outside the "Local Craft Shop"
Along the road you may be required by the locals to stop and photograph them with their work vehicles, which are ornately decorated and obviously a source of great pride.
In the Shop, the proprietor showed us a number of pieces. We ignored the really huge carpets (no money, no space in the backpack) but even the five foot by three foot silk carpets (1.8 x 1 meter) ran from $300-350. That's not bad- these were the real deal, high quality silk and extremely good workmanship. In Germany they would likely fetch a few thousand euros (this were a 3 meter by 2 meter Ikea rug can cost 175 euros). Nevertheless, I like to actually put my rugs on the floor, and silk is a little bit too nice for that. So we bought a 3 foot by two foot (1x0.6 meter) rug, out of wool, with traditional local designs incorporating the animals of Noah's ark. It set us back about 35 euros.
our Rug
A rug of this size for that money is a rather good price. Granted, my hetero life partner's mother comes from the Algarve, thus her genetic heritage is likely at least 40% North African (I myself think it concentrates in the booty region). Whether this is relevant to her negotiating skills is not scientifically proven, but I know that in Morocco, whenever the merchants offered me a price, she would point out that she is Portuguese, and they would apologize, and begin the process of haggling again, with half the price knocked off even before the fighting began. The point is that having a Moorish chick with me might mean I got slightly better prices than you can, but still. Even at twice the price this is an extremely inexpensive amount to pay.
Lake Van lies to the southwest of Beyazit, and there are no North/South rail lines in Eastenr Anatolia. Nor do the big buses serve Beyazit, so we hopped into a mini bus and headed off.
The View from our Minibus
Thalatta! Thalatta!
Heading back towards the center of Anatolia, the land is really quite desolate. As a historical side note, at some point we crossed the route taken by Xenophon's 10,000 as they fought their way back home from the center of the Persian Empire. Having been hired as mercenaries by Cyrus the younger, their Employer lost, and perished in, the battle of Cunaxa in 401 BC.
It's off topic, but the Anabasis is one of the greatest adventure stories of all time, with the added bonus of actually having happened, so indulge me if you will.
Greek Hoplites were exceptionally excellent soldiers, as so entertainingly depicted in the film the 300. As fanciful as it was, it really wasn't that far off in its depiction of the Spartans' martial abilities. After ignominiously expelling Xerxes army from Attic Greece (Greece in Asia Minor remained Persian) the cities of Hellas took to hiring their hoplites out as mercenaries. Cyrus the Younger, a Satrap in Asia Minor, and according to Xenophon (a foot soldier with exceptional writing skills who joined the expedition), the best of all the Persians, decided to unseat his brother Artaxerxes II, and hired 10,000 hoplites to help him accomplish this feat. With these ten thousand, and around 80,000 other troops (of the typical undisciplined Persian type) he advanced to near Modern Baghdad, were he confronted the Army of Artaxerxes, led by the Satrap Tissaphernes. The Greek Hoplites compose the right flank of the Army. In the ensuing battle, Cyrus the Younger was killed.
On the right wing, however, the Greek mercenaries were triumphant. That was the good news. The bad news was that their employer was dead, they were thousands of miles from Greece, and the locals had become distinctly hostile. Here is Xenophon's description from The March Up Country
Heralds from the King arrived... they delivered themselves of the following message: "The
great king having won the victory and slain Cyrus, bids the Hellenes
to surrender their arms; to betake themselves to the gates of the
king's palace, and there obtain for themselves what terms they can."
That was what the heralds said, and the Hellenes listened with heavy
hearts; but Clearchus [the expedition's commander] spoke, and his words were few; "Conquerors do
not, as a rule, give up their arms"
In answer to him Phalinus said:
"The king claims to have conquered, because he has put Cyrus to death;
and who is there now to claim the kingdom as against himself? He
further flatters himself that you also are in his power, since he
holds you in the heart of his country, hemmed in by impassable rivers;
and he can at any moment bring against you a multitude so vast that
even if leave were given to rise and slay you could not kill them.
</pre>
The Greeks, with their democratic natures, then debate the proposal amongst themselves, and decide not to give up their arms. As Clearchus stated "If we are to be friends with the King, we shall be better friends with our arms than if we surrender them to another. And if we are to fight the King, we will fight better with our weapons than without them. Clearchus knew that the King wanted to destroy them, though they would have been equally willing to fight for him as against him, as their previous contract had ended with Cyrus' death.
Through treachery, and under a herald of truce, Tissaphernes had Clearchus and the entire corps of generals executed, an astounding sacrilege (granted, the Spartans had killed the heralds of Xerxes, also a sacrilege, so some said they had it coming). After the death of their Generals, the army elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and they began their Anabasis (march to the sea). Along the way they were confronted by ceaseless attacks of Persians and other barbarians, such as the Carduchians on the banks of the Aras river, which we also had to cross on our way to Van.
The kind of landscape the Ten Thousand marched through, though likely with less cows.
After several months, and with only 6,000 men remaining alive, having defeated everything thrown at them, they reached Trabzon, and the sea. The remarkable performance of the 10,000 eventually led Phillip of Macedon, and his son Alexander, to realize that a truly large and supported army of Greeks could break the Persian empire completely.
When we arrived in Van, we too saw "the sea," although we travelled by coach and were not pursued by vicious Persians.
Van
Van city is a large and vibrant place, with around 500,000 souls. It boasts a very particular geophysical quirk, the Rock of Van, which has made it a place of settlement since the 9th century BC, when it was an Urartian capital.
The Rock of Van is a giant chunk of stone that rises, much like Gibraltar, straight up out of the surrounding plains.
View from the Rock
Right on the shore of the lake, it is a natural place to fortify, and almost impossible to take without a lengthy and bloody siege. There has been some sort of castle here for almost the last 3,000 years. Xerxes himself ordered an inscription, one of only about a dozen or so in the world, carved into the side of the Rock.
Inscription of Xerxes the Great
A great god is Ahuramazda, the greatest of gods, who created this earth, who created that sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Xerxes king, one king for all, one ruler for all.I am Xerxes, the great king, the king of kings, king of all kinds of peoples with all kinds of origins, king of this earth great and wide, the son of king Darius, the Achaemenid.
Traded back and forth between Persians and Turks, it became definitively Ottoman only in 1570, though the local population was overwhelmingly Armenian. Old Van lay directly beneath the Rock, and was devastated by the Russians in the first world war.
The gently undulating landscape below the Rock seems to belong to a long vanished hittite city, whereas in fact it is less than a century since this wasteland was a thriving metropolis.
The new City of Van is built about 3 miles away from the lake.
The rock is now a sort of park, surrounded by locals out for a picnic. You can easily, as we did, spend a day climbing it and exploring all of its nooks and crannies. It was truly one of the most pelasurable days of the whole trip. The air is warm, but the lake breeze is refreshing, the locals are friendly, and the views are spectacular.
Spectacular, and a bit nerve racking
The Rock, however, is extremely high up. I would like neither to attack it, nor fall off of it. And there are no safety rails, so be cautious.
Your faithful narrator performs the tai chi manouver called "swooping eagle devours mountain goat"
Old Van from the top of the Rock
View of New Van
New Van
New Van isn't that spectacular, it is modern and (unusually), laid out on a grid. We stayed at the Buyuk Asu hotel (50 euros, modern with excellent toilets). We did, however, discover a few things while watching the Turkish language TV stations. The election was heating up, and riots were breaking out all over Kurdistan. It seems that, pretty much right after we left a city, it seemed to erupt. I don't know why I have that effect on people.
Van is now mainly Kurdish, and the Kurdish political party is strong there (this party was banned a few days later, which led to serious disturbances, particularly in Diyarbakir, which we didn't visit.) The flesh pressing was in full swing, and the streets were crowded with people. Although given to roaring in approval at the pronouncements of Kurdish politicians, they were quite well disciplined. Let me point out that, despite this being a time of extreme tension, we were in no danger. Everyone was solicitous and helpful. It took us about a week to even figure out what was going on.
Political Demonstration, under our Hotel Balcony
The food in Van, by the way, is excellent. Particularly a restaurant called "Kebabistan," which had the best Ayran ever.
Another fine Beyti Kebab. Revolution or no, one has to eat
Next post, our trip to Akdamar, yet another of the photos I had been waiting to take for years.
Lake Van and Akdamar Island
Lake Van is a strange body of water indeed. First off, it's big- the biggest lake in Turkey. It is 75 miles (119km)wide at its broadest point, with an average depth of 561 feet (171 meters), although it reaches up to three times that depth in places.
It is also endorheic, meaning it has not outlets. Countless rivers and streams flow into it, but nothing flows out. This, given its regular evaporation, has made the lake rather alkaline- its excellent for washing clothes as it has a natural detergent effect.
This effect is not so good for fish- Lake Van has only one species of fish in it, the Pearl Mullet. This is also the only place that this fish is found. The water changes color constantly, depending on the depth, the angle of the sun, cloud cover, and perhaps the whimsy of the gods. It is truly a beautiful body of water.
Van to Akdamar
We got up at 9 AM and headed down to the minibus center. If you want to get to Akdamar Island, the best way to do it is to catch a bus to Geves. The highway runs along the south shore of the lake, and you will pass right by the docks where you can get a ferry.
The Akdamar Ferry
It wasn't high season, so the boat wasn't running that frequently. We had to wait an hour or so before it departed. I don't know if there is a schedule or not, or if they just wait until they have a certain number of people. While we were waiting we were joined by about a dozen Kurdish ladies with giant thermoses, picnic gear, and a passel of kids. Also joining the group were a young "modern" Turkish couple, meaning no headscarf, jeans, and a rather mild form of snuggling.
Akdamar Island (known to Armenians as Akhtamar or Ahtamar) is famous primarily for an isolated church. Being a safe refuge, the island was for a time the residence of an Armenian King (the euphoniously named King Gagik) and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross was the palace church. It was constructed in the mid 900's.
The Island itself is covered with apricot trees, which were in bloom when we arrived. Sweet smelling, and idyllic.
One can enter the church as well, although it is mostly empty. It was active until 1915 as the center of an Armenian Catholicos and a home to quite a few monks. The monks were killed and the monastic building later destroyed. Although the Turkish government is now committed to saving what remains (which is quite a lot, really) it has been officially a museum since 2005, which irritates some Armenians (they wish ti to be a church).
Inside the Church are quite a few frescos, mostly damaged, but still recognizable.
Outside there are numerous reliefs carved onto the walls, representing biblical scenes like David and Goliath, and Jonah being swallowed by the whale, although the whale looks suspiciously dog like.
David and Goliath
OK, now for the money shots, so to speak:
Church w/ picnicking Kurds
It is super late, so I will add some more tomorrow.
Thanks Nikolai. We all like to be original artists and whatnot, but occasionally a postcard shot is required. Also, sometimes cliches are cliches because, well, they should be. The first shot of the Akdamar Church with the mountains behind is one of my favorites from the trip.
Akdamar Island's church is on a flattish area, but there is also a hill to the west of this area. It is supposedly fenced off, but there is a hole in the fence that you could literally drive a truck through, so walk on up. It is the best spot to get the lake, church, and the mountains behind.
Above the fence and up the hill
The last boat from the Island departs at, If I recall correctly, 6 PM. Check this when you get there, it could be critically important. There aren't much in the way of facilities on the islands (other than remarkably clean bathrooms) and Anatolia can get extremely cold at night, so I wouldn't want to camp out. There is a sort of Park ranger here, so I imagine if you do want to stay, you'll have to hide yourself on the far side of the hill. Moonlight shots of the church could be interesting....
Regardless, we had to leave at around 3PM, as we had a long and rather circuitous journey to our next destination. The dock for the boat back is just below the church.
When you get back to the mainland, you walk across the highway and simply wait for a bus to pick you up. Or some other vehicle, which is what happened to us.
We waited for about an hour for a bus, when something looking like a minibus stopped, and we and the "modern couple" headed towards it. Climbing aboard, we realized that it was empty, containing only a devastatingly handsome driver with amazing silver eyes (no metaphor, they really were silver- this part of the world has the widest variety of eye color I have ever seen) and his companion. They refused to take money, which was when I realized that we were basically being given a ride by some (again) friendly strangers.
We came to understand that they would take us to Geves, where buses are more frequent. We got to Geves, and drove around for a while, talking to various weird dudes, and getting a look at the statue of the Lake Van Monster (who looks, unsurprisingly, much like Nessie from Scotland). Then we headed back to the highway, as they had decided to go back towards Van and drop us off (despite the fact it was out of the way) at Edremit. Apparently, they thought we would have to wait too long for the bus.
They drove like bats out of hell for about 20 minutes, then suddenly slowed down and put on their seatbelts, telling us to do the same and asking if we had our passports. (apparently, there was a police car behind us for a few kilometers). After the cops took a different direction, off came the seatbelts and back up went the speedometer. A note on seatbelts, they aren't much in favor in Anatolia. I suppose wearing a seatbelt indicates a few things that are not so good from their point of view. If you wear a seatbelt you are either insulting the driver by indicating that you think he will crash, or attempting to avoid the kismet Allah has decreed for you, as if you crash, it was what Allah willed anyway. Trying to circumvent God's plans is as unnatural as it is pointless and ultimately foolish.
Eventually, the dropped us off at Edremit, which is exactly nowhere, waved goodbye, and sped off back the way they came, once again refusing to accept anything but our verbal thanks.
After a while we finally got on a minibus heading back to Van. Along the way we:
-picked up a gardener, with his tools and a box full of flowers.
-dropped off a bundle of letters at a roadside cafe.
-picked up some money at another roadside cafe
-dropped off the money at yet another roadside cafe
-had a stop and chat with a grizzled old man by the side of the road
-stopped and admonished kids for playing ball to close to the highway
In Turkey, the Dolmus is not just a manner of transportation, it is also a postal service, bush telegraph, mobile banking system, and inter-village moral instruction service. Every Dolmus is, more or less, a rolling village. Much better than renting a car, despite the inconveniences.
Back in Van, much later than we had anticipated, we looked for a bus to Batman, a town in Southeast Anatolia of no interest whatsoever, but which is a gateway to the Arab sections of the country.
A comfortable, but rather slow ride
The bus for Batman left at 8 PM, so we had two hours to kill, which we did by drinking strong coffee and eating sweet Baklava, and taking the inevitable photograph of Christiano Ronaldo.
Even more famous than SIMAO!
Our ultimate destination was a little village called Hasankeyf, about which more anon.
The trip to Batman took a little longer than expected, due to, I suppose, civil unrest. Diyarbakir was experiencing its third day of riots, the Kurdish Party (we discovered later) had just been banned, and the Jandarma were out in force. Just after dark we were stopped at a roadside checkpoint, all the men in the bus decamped (including me) and we were frisked for weapons. We were getting deep into Kurdistan, so two hours later we stopped again, only this time the personal searches were far from rudimentary, and they went through the bags as well. On top of a platform above us three Militiamen kept machine guns constantly trained on us as we went through the rigamarole.
We ended up getting to the Otogar in Batman, or rather, many miles outside of Batman, just after midnight. It was here we had our first public transportation hiccup. As we were pndering what to do, all the Servis minibuses to the center of town departed, leaving us alone with a rather mangy cat, a retired dude who apparently lives at the bus station, or uses it to avoid his wife, and two sleepyish security guards.
The retired man had (surprise surprise) spent 26 years in Duisberg, and informed us in excellent German that the next bus to Hasankeyf was at 5 AM. A taxi into Batman would be wicked expensive (Taxi drivers in Turkey are ravenous vultures, apparently, almost without exception, as all honest God fearing folk use dolmuses).
We gloomily prepared to spend a night on the hard floor of the Batman bus station, unfed, unshowered, and somewhat less than totally content. We had not reckoned, however, on the persistence of Turkish hospitality even in the most extreme circumstances.
The two security guards opened up the office of the bus company they worked for, and laid out some pillows and blankets on the office couch for us. They then dissapeared, returning about ten minutes later with bread, cheese, veggies, and tea.
Our random benefactors
They asked us whether we wanted to take the 5 AM bus, or the 7 AM bus, and promised to wake us up in time for departure. After an hour or so watching Turkish TV and "conversing" after a fashion, they departed, and we sank into blissful sleep on the surprisingly comfortable couches. The next morning we were duly woken up at 6 AM, our bags placed onto the appropriate bus, and off we went.
Hasankeyf
Despite the fact that the existence of Hasankeyf is alluded to as far back as 1800 BC, it isn't a big place. It's interesting, however, for a number of reasons. It has quite a few mosques of delicate character (having once been important), and it sits astride the Tigris river, a short distance from its headwaters. This is both a blessing, as it made the town what it was, and a curse, as a current dam project means that this villlage, occupied for the last 3,000 years, will soon be underwater. Go and see it now, while you still have time. Unfortunately, we had crap weather (for shooting). But you no what a grey overcast sky means, right? Time for the black and white.
Tigris River, with remains of old bridge
The first order of business was finding breakfast, despite the fact that it was early and nothing much was happening in the town. We asked a guy on the main street, and he went to a restaurant with a river view, which the owner opened up for us. We had a remarkable breakfast, as well as a chat with the owner's son (named Umut) before he headed off to school. Most of the people left in Hasankeyf are Arabs. These were the first Arabs in Turkey that we encountered.
The restaurant owner let us leave our heavy backpacks at his place, and we wandered around the village with only our photo gear.
The village has basically one main street, behind which are the ruins of a mosque/medresseh complex and the opening to a sort of canyon.
Along the water are some beautiful minarets.
The Canyon has some cliff dwellings similar to Cappadocia, many of which are still used by shepherds, goats and sheep being the primary industry here (with some tourism).
After exploring the back of Hasankeyf, we decided to take a look at the Tigris, which is undoubtedly quite scenic here, although a far cry from the wide and massive river which flows through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf.
It is also, being mostly meltwater here, ridiculously cold.
Nevertheless, we had to give it a try.
The Tigris is, in a pinch, an excellent place to wash your socks.
Returning to the Cafe, we picked up our bags from the owner and his family (one of whom looks like a Turkish/Arab Elvis) and set of to find the bus to Midyat, home of one of Anatolia last pockets of native Christians.
The palace church on Akdamar Island is one of the most expressive churches I have seen. I can hear the Byzantine rites being sung in it in my imagination, smell the incense. It would have been a great spiritual experience to have entered it in its prime, with it carrying all the great Christian stories.
Your final shot of it through the apricot blossoms is breathtaking!
The palace church on Akdamar Island is one of the most expressive churches I have seen. I can hear the Byzantine rites being sung in it in my imagination, smell the incense. It would have been a great spiritual experience to have entered it in its prime, with it carrying all the great Christian stories.
Your final shot of it through the apricot blossoms is breathtaking!
Thanks for all the kind words. Apparently, the church Akdamar still has one Armenian Orthodox service per year, I'm not sure when though. I would love to see that.
We are still a ways from the end Andy, so keep a few more minutes free.:D
Wherein the Author explores theology and ethnicity
Turkey's most well known ethnic group, other than Turks themselves of course, are the Kurds, followed closely by the Armenians and Greeks (ironic, as there are hardly any left). Having passed the Tigris river at Hasankeyf, we were still technically in Kurdistan, but the overwhelming Kurdishness of the rest of the Southeast began to increasingly fade. Now more and more of the people we were meeting were Semitic.
I use the term Semitic advisedly, although most folks would simply refer to them as "Arabs," and indeed the bulk of them are Arabs. Nevertheless, there many who are not.
Although trying to figure out who is who often leaves me as confused looking as that kid on the left.
Westerners are used to hearing the word "Semitic" only in the context of Anti-Semitism, which is a strange word. After all, antisemitism is really only used in reference to hatred of Jews. I suppose "Anti-Jewism" wasn't euphonious or psuedoscientific sounding enough for its adherents, so antisemitism it was. Neverthell, though Hitler proudly claimed to be antisemitic, I seriously doubt he thought much about, say, extending the holocaust to Nestorian Christians speaking Aramaic and living in the levant.
The Semitic peoples, speaking Semitic languages, are a varied group indeed, including Berbers, Arabs, Jews, Ethiopians, and even the Maltese. The map below indicates Semitic languages in orange:
The main Semitic peoples in Turkey are Jews, the Doenme (a strange group of crpyto-Jewish sabbateans, about which we will not discuss), Arabs (everybody knows who they are) and Assyrians. The peoples we encountered during the next stage of our trip were Arabs and Assyrians.
Arabs
I don't think I need to go on too much about Arabs, except to point out that not all Arabs are Muslims. This statement shouldn't be controversial, but it sort of is. The vast majority of Arabs are indeed Muslim, but many are not. Arab culture is based around a language, Arabic, and there are Arab Catholics (quite a few of them, actually, particularly in Lebanon), other Arab Christians, and even Arab Jews- this is perhaps surpising to the reader, but many Mizrahi Jews, Jews from North Africa and the fertile crescent (as opposed to Sephardi, who come from Spain and Portugal, and the Ashkenazi, who come from Central and Eastern Europe) self identify as Arab Jews and see no contradiction in this.
Assyrians
Unlike the Maronites of Lebanon, Assyrians are not simply "Arab Christians," despite the fact that they are often misidentified as such. Their language sounds like Arabic (much as Dutch sounds much like German), but then again, Hebrew sounds a lot like Arabic, despite the fact that the speakers often look different. Assyrians speak Aramaic (or Syraic, depending on who you ask), the modern descendant of the language of Jesus (as they constantly point out), with its own script, which reads right to left, as do Hebrew and Arabic. I think Gene Roddenberry may have ripped this off to form the basis of the Klingon Alphabet.
Aramaic inscription on a tomb
Assyrians are connected, albeit via a rather crooked path, to the Assyrian empire of ancient Mesopotamia. Maybe.
Their Religion is Christian, although theologically distinct from both Orthodox and Catholic. They split off from these branches after the Council of Ephesus in the 4th century, due to some quibling over the exact distinctiveness of the separation between Jesus' human and divine nature. Apparently, they think Jesus was more divine than human (Unlike the Arians, who went waay off the rails), whereas the Ethiopians think he is more human than divine, though not to the extent Arius did, although more so than the Assyrians' main theologian, Diodorus of Tarsus (I could be wrong on this, it is all inside baseball to me and my head is starting to hurt) and the Greeks and Latins agreed not to talk too specifically about it, although later fell to killing each other over the letter "i" (homoousian vs. homoiousian) all this bickering had the effect of creating a lot of bloodletting and handing over the entire middle east to the Muslims, who had the tidy solution to the problem of not thinking Jesus divine at all.
Tur Abdin
Tur Abdin is the name of the Syraic/Assyrian enclave in Southeastern Turkey, which used to be full of Assyrian Christians. Their numbers have dwindled in the last century (down to about 5,000), as it has become easier to immigrate to the west. Additionally, even as far back as Ottoman times every "outrage" against Muslims by the west, or defeat of the Ottomans by Christian powers usually brought vengeance dealt out to these Christians, seen (wrongly) as either allies, sympathizers, or catspaws of Western Christian (the difficult history of these people with other Western Christian groups is simply not recognized by most Muslims, much as we do, they regard the other religion as an undifferentiated mass).
There remains, however, a tenacious community of indigenous Christians, and it is yet too early to write them off. We first encountered them in the town of Midyat.
Midyat
Midyat, once an almost purely Christian town, is no majority Muslim. However, the old city is a sort of Christian preserve, and they are very much out and about.
Chickens are, also, very much out and about
You are immediately aware that you have entered another part of Turkey. Both the people and the buildings are quite different. Midyat seems to be constructed out of one type of sand colored stone, in a truly Levantine rather than Anatolian style. It reminds me a great deal of Malta (who are, interestingly, these people's linguistic cousins).
Unfortunately, yet again, the sky was dismal. Nevertheless, there were good shots to be had.
local kids staring at us
Across the fields towards Mar Gabriel
Midyat has several churches, but its most significant religious site is the ancient monastery of Mar Gabriel, founded in 397 AD. It houses 3 monks, 13 nuns, and 12,000 bodies in an ossuary, as well as an extensive graveyard. If you would like to visit, simply walk up to the gate and knock.
We were greeted by a friendly priest, who showed us around the interior of the monastery.
Monastary Church
Bible in Aramaic
Walking back across the fields we returned to the old city, where we came across some ladies at one of the areas traditional communal ovens. Each street used to have one, and the ladies (never the men) cook bread for their families in it, and of course share gossip and talk about village life.
Ms. Justi and the Christian Ladies
Of course, I asked them if they were baking bread, and of course they ran back into the house and brought us a hot loaf. It was amazing- round, dense, moist, and tasting the way bread ought to taste.
Taking our leave of these friendly women, we then sought out a church located nearby, within the old city.
There we had a chat with an English speaking man, who induced one of the Assyrian students to open the church up for us.
While at the Church of St. Simona we had an interesting chat with the English speaking man. The Turkish government doesn't trust the Assyrians because they aren't Turkish, and their patriarch is in Damascus. Kurds don't get along with them because they have a sort of traditional enmity (Kurdish shepherds, Assyrian cityfolk, all that stuff), and resentment amongst the local Arabs has grown with the growing predation (from their point of view) of the west upon the Arab muslim heartland. It's the old story- Assyrians are blamed for the sins of the Americans and Europeans. Why? Because they are all Christians. The irony is that much of Europe is no longer Christian in any meaningful sense, and that Americans have, in general, no idea that these people exist. So their are squeezed from all sides.
Our faith, in the west, is an easy thing to bear. It slips away from you like an old winter coat, its passing so light as to hardly be noticed. But in Tur Abdin, being a Christian is a meaningful thing. It entails suffering. It demands sacrifice. It is anything but simply a habit, or cultural relic. The community may, or may not, be dying. But the faith of the community is most certainly alive.
As we prepared to leave, the man told us his name was Isadodu, Aramaic for "Christ is risen." "And it is true," He added, with a touch of defiance. "Christ is risen. Perhaps this makes some people not so glad. But it makes me glad."
As we left St. Simona, it had grown somewhat late and the sky had begun to take on an ominous hue.
Although I didn't know it yet, I was about to experience my first sandstorm- fortunately it was a brief one, and we weathered it inside an internet cafe. During a lull I briefly stepped outside to take this shot, which, I feel the need to add, is straight out of the camera, without color correction. It really looked like this, like a giant orange julius colored filter had taken over the whole world.
Mardin
After a sound night's sleep at our hotel, we emerged onto the street in order to catch the bus to Mardin- like Midyat a center of Assyrian Christians, but somewhat rather well known. After the sand storm of the previous night the cobblestones and cars were coated with a thick layer of dust. As we walked toward the station, raindrops as fat as thumbnails began to drop all around us, the grey skies above began to spit out half a weeks accumulation of sand. On the one hand, this made the journey a bit less pleasant than previously. On the other hand, I hoped that the change in weather would herald an end to the hazy skies that had plagued my photographic opportunities for days.
All sleepiness was banished by the violent neon colors of the minivan to Mardin.
subtlety is not an element of the Turkish aesthetic
Mardin is the last town before the beginning of what was once called "Araby" - the old town skirts a ridge that marks the end of the Anatolian Plateau, and below spreads the broad expanse of the Syrian plain. But before you can look into the distance towards Damascus, you have to catch a bus from the relatively new and unattractive new town up the hill. If you are in doubt about where to go, ask for "Cumhuriyet (republic) Square," its the center of the old town.
The plains of Syria
The town is principally Arabic in ethnic makeup (this is what most folks in the street are speaking), and although once a Christian center, is now mainly Muslim. Intermittent persecution and well of relatives in America have drawn most of the Assyrian population away. Their churches, for the moment, remain.
Friendly local
Mardin Fortress and Zinciriye Medresseh
Just below the fortress is an old Muslim religious school, which has a cafe from which you can get a spectacular view of the town and the plains.
Interior Courtyard of Zinciriye Medresse
I would highly recommend having a "Mardin Style" coffee in the Medresse's courtyard cafe. The prices are expensive (though normal for Germany), but the mood is peaceful (the courtyard was intended to give imams in training a foretaste of the paradise that awaited faithful Muslims) and the view is well worth it.
A fountain in a recessed alcove emits a stream of cool water which flows into a pool in the middle of the courtyard, around which are an array of colorful flowers.
Once again I was reminded of Central Asia, specifically that pools of Bukhara.
From the Medresse one can descend the winding streets down the hillside, which are full of local shops. For the first time in a week we began to see foreign travelers, who aren't thick on the ground, but do drop in. The upside is that you can stock up on Kitsch (which I unashamedly love) and some signs are in English.
Mardin is famous for soap
Mardin, not being big, required only an afternoon to see, so we boarded a bus at around 4:30, and headed off to Urfa. Leaving town, the bus dropped down the steep hills, and followed the north edge of the Syrian plain to the west.
The road from Mardin
Turkey owns a very small strip of the flatlands here, in what is geographically and ethnically (but not politically) Syria. The border is a few kilometers away, the same border that, a few months after our return, tens of thousands of Syrians would cross while fleeing from government persecution. Most of the folks on the other side of the border are related to the inhabitants of the Turkish side, keep in mind that the "border" is less than a century old, the two areas where unified within living memory, and most of the locals have traditionally herded sheep in a semi nomadic fashion.
The Anatolian Plateau and the Syrian Plain
Northern Syria belies the image of Arabia as a desert land, it is incredibly green and remarkably fertile. Also surprising is how stark the contrast between Anatolia and Arabia is- as seen in the photograph above, Asia minor ends with startling abruptness.
Glorious Urfa
The bus arrived at Urfa at around 7 in the evening. Urfa was, mostly, unknown to me- I knew it was mostly not Turkish, that it was big, and rather well known in Turkey itself. What surprised me was the air of prosperity and relative modernity I saw as we entered the outskirts of Urfa. The buildings are clean and modern. The streets are well paved, with very little visible trash, and well tended medians often with flowers in them. It sort of looks like Portugal.
The Otogar is, as usual, way out of the center of town. It is a huge and modern station, resembling an airport in the west. There are restaurants, gleaming marble floors, and multiple levels. Figuring out where the buses to the center are isn't hassle free. We wandered around the Otogar for a bit, and finally found a section for "county buses" in English. Figuring that these were the locals, we asked around for the "old city" (Eski Sehir) in Turkish. This is a mistaka, as there is a rather large and important city called Eskisehir (named, somewhat less than originally, "old city") about 400 km away. Folks kept directing us back to the long distance buses on the first level.
If in doubt as to how to get to the center of any city, the best idea is to ask for Ataturk Bulvari (Ataturk Boulevard). Every city has one. Even if a village has only one street, that street will be named Ataturk Bulvari. It's usually in the center, as well. Scratch that. Ataturk Bulvari is always in the center.
The buses to get to the center of (Sanli)Urfa aren't in the bus station. You have to catch a local city bus. Walk out of the bus station to the road that curves up the hill (the station is sort of built into a hill.) Heading "up" the hill, cross the road and catch the bus on the right side of the street. This will take you to the last stop about 20-25 minutes later, which is the center. (The stop is the Merkezi)
Having spent an hour figuring this out, we arrived downtown after night had begun to fall. We had picked out a hotel (Otel Bokay) from the Lonely Planet, but it was full, so we ended up staying at the Ipek Palas hotel near the medical center. It's a bit odd looking, but it is cheap, and there is a laundry shop right next door.
After ditching our stuff in the room, we went in search of dinner. Unlike Midyat and Mardin, which are culturally more Arabic/Assyrian than "normal Turkey," but still not exactly "Middle Eastern," Old Urfa clearly belongs to the Middle East. The small streets reminded me very much of Morocco.
On the Gloriousness of Urfa
The official name of the city is Sanliurfa (pronounced "Shan-lee-oor-fah). This means "Glorious (Sanli) Urfa. It was given the name "Glorious" by the Turkish parliement in 1984 in recognition of its heroic resistance to the French during their attempt to partition (with the other great powers) Turkey following the first world war. Locals, in fact everything that isn't an official document, still refer to it as "Urfa." Even the long distance buses have "Urfa" or "S.Urfa" on their dashboard signs.
Urfa's first gloriousness is mythical in nature. According to Genesis, the prophet Abraham was born in the city of "Ur of the Chaldees." This city's exact location is a matter of debate, but traditional Muslim and Jewish opinion holds that it is, in fact, the city of Urfa. You may know the name of the city better in its Byzantine guise- Edessa.
Abraham's a pretty big deal- being the founder of Monotheism and the only religious element that Muslims, Christians, and Jews can agree on. The cave where he is reputed to be born is now a Mosque, and a center of pilgrimage.
The cave us located within a rather large park on the edge of the old town. The park is well tended, crowded with pilgrims, and full of beautiful plants, trees, and flowers which were in full bloom.
The Mosque of Abraham
Strangely, given the importance of Abraham to the three religious traditions of the West, and the fact that all of them identify this as Abraham's birthplace, the pilgrims seem to be entirely Muslim. I saw no Christian or Jewish pilgrims at all. This is particularly curious for Jewish tourists, as Abraham is important to them in a way that far exceeds his place in Christianity or Islam.
The cave itself is located within the cliff that forms the old "rock" of Edessa (upon which is the ancient Roman/Byzantine citadel site). Women and men enter separately, and view the cave separately as well.
The cave itself is not a great place to take pictures, although no one really minds that you take pictures. In general, Turkish Muslims are pretty chill about Gavurs coming into their Mosques and nosing about. In North Africa, Mosques aren't so welcoming (and are typically prohibited to non-Muslims).
So the legend runs that Abraham was born in this cave. His mother was hiding here because the local King, one Nimrod, had been told by his astrologers that a baby would shortly be born who would destroy pagan idolatry, of which Nimrod and (naturally) the pagan priests were quite fond. Therefore Nimrod ordered all newborn children to be put to death.
As Abraham matured into a young man, God revealed himself to him, whereupon Abraham began to preach the oneness of Elyon (God most high) to the Urfans. Nimrod was having none of that. According tot he Jewish midrash, he then constructed a giant furnace to throw Abraham into. Other accounts say that he built a massive bonfire, the largest that the world had seen to that point, and threw Abraham from the heights of Urfa's cliff into the fire- whereupon God immediately changed the fire into water, and the logs of the fire into carp. This pool of water and its carp exist even unto today, in the form of the pool of Abraham.
The pool of Abraham
After touring the pool, and feeding the carp (a source of mighty baraka) we ascended the cliff to the site of the old citadel. The view of Old Urfa from there is spectacular.
The most prominent remains atop the citadel mount are the "columns of Nimrod," which are actually Roman in origin.
Most educational! I didn't know any of this...
Say, did you have a CP on your lens all the time? Most of the images look CP-ed...
Hey Nik,
I did mostly shoot with a CP, except when the weather was super hazy for the days in Dogubeyazut and around that time. I pretty much use one all the time for outdoor shots.
I also process in lightroom (I shoot only RAW) and tend to go for the color slide look.
Comments
So, leaving the dreadfulness of Kars behind us, we arrived, finally, at our ultimate destination- the ancient city of Ani.
As has been mentioned before, the political landscape of Anatolia has been, in a word, rather fluid. A dozen or so major empires have held sway here, from the Persians to the Ottomans, but each empire's apogee was followed by a decline. During periods of decline minor states took the opportunity to grab territory and establish themselves, although their periods of greatness tended to end sharply when the old empires recovered their balance, or new ones arrived on the scene. Most of these "minor kingdoms" are attached to some sort of ethnic group, many of which are still resident either in Anatolia or neighboring territories.
Therein lies the genesis of much of the ethnic discord of today. The states located in the area which stretches from East/Central Europe to the Caucusus mountains are, typically, much less stable than their Western European counterparts, contain far more ethnic groups, and are far loss "modern" in their culture in some respects. Each national group's claims are maximalist in nature, that is to say, they all look back to the point when their particular ethnic kingdom was at the height of its power. Needless to say, these claims are impossible to justify in terms of each other. They are a guarantee of constant strife.
All groups employ versions of history which are distorted and unreal- This includes both Turks, and Armenians. Also, engaging in any sort of dialogue about historical events is useless. Either you swallow completely some particular factions version of events, or you are a craven tool of the other side. Sides, really, as it seems that every ethnic group hates every other ethnic group that it has ever come into contact with. Thus Armenian nationalists fight not only with Turkish nationalists (understandably) but with Georgians, and with anyone else who doesn't wholeheartedly support Greater Armenia. Not to pick too much on Armenia, the demagogues of every other ethnic group are just the same.
We will return to the Armenian question later. For the moment, let us examine the political situation that led to the foundation of Ani, now abandoned, which was once the rival in glory of Constantinople and Baghdad.
By 855 the initial impetus of the Muslim explosion out of the Arabian peninsula had waned. The Abbassids and the Byzantines had worn each other out, and each sought a breathing space to recover. In that void, King Ashot I, of the Bagratid Armenians, carved out a large Armenian state as a buffer between the two.
Bagratid Armenia, image courtesy of Wikimedia
The first capital of Bagratid Armenia was at Kars, but in 961 the seat of the Kingdom was transferred to Ani. Between 961 and 1020 the city reached the height of its size, with a population of between 100,000 and 200,000 people. For this time period, this was gargantuan.
Ani's troubles began after 1020. Two brothers fought each other for the throne of the Bagratids, ignoring resurgent Byzantine power and the threat of marauding Turkish tribes that lay over the horizon. In 1045 the Byzantines gained control of the city, and in 1064 it was conqoured and sacked by the Seljuks.
According to the Arab Historian Al-Gawzi, "The army entered the city, massacred its inhabitants, pillaged and burned it, leaving it in ruins and taking prisoner all those who remained alive...The dead bodies were so many that they blocked the streets; one could not go anywhere without stepping over them. And the number of prisoners was not less than 50,000 souls. I was determined to enter city and see the destruction with my own eyes. I tried to find a street in which I would not have to walk over the corpses; but that was impossible."
The Seljuks were later pushed out by the Georgians (1199), whose rule lasted until the Mongol conquest and sack of the city (1264). Each misfortune made the place smaller and smaller, until the mid 18th century when, having become little more than a village, it was abandoned.
The memory of Ani still lived on in the hearts of Armenian nationalists, however, who sought after the end of the First World War to regain the glory of the Bagratids and take over large parts of Turkish held territory in Eastern Anatolia. The Turkish National Congress ordered a local General, Karim Karabekir, to raze what remained of the city. Fortunately, he mostly ignored this order.
Since the end of WWI, the border, which is literally at Ani (the plateau the city is on ends in a ravine, which is the heavily mined border between Turkey and Armenia) has kept the place relatively off limits. Until a few years ago it was not really open to the public. Even today, it has a forbidding atmosphere, and the wardens of the site issue stern warnings not to photograph across the border, and under no circumstances to attempt to cross.
Anyway, here are some photos.
The modern village outside Ani
Ani, seen from the top of the remaining city walls
The Armenian/Turkish border
Ani was known as "the city of a thousand churches" and many of them still survive in various states of disrepair. Sub Prkich, the Church of the Redeemer, was split in half by lightening in 1955.
Church of the Redeemer
The script found throughout Ani, and which can be seen here on the collapsed section of the Church, is identified by the local guide as an "ancient Seljuk alphabet." This is not the case. It is Armenian, yet another instance of the ridiculousness of extremists historical claims. (many people continue to identify buildings with crosses and images of the apostles carved on them as mosques built by Seljuks).
Church of St. Gregory
SS. Gregory, with lightening rod
http://justiceiro.smugmug.com/photos/i-2PNbn4x/0/L/i-2PNbn4x-L.jpg
Monastery of the Virgin
Ani Cathedral
The largest building in Ani is the Cathedral of the Mother of God, built in 1001.
Nearby is an actual Seljuk mosque.
Last but not least there is the iconic Church of St Gregory Abughraments.
Thanks Niel, I like Istanbul (who doesn't) but the east is in a way far more interesting, mainly because of its resistance, in some respects, to modernity, or at least to its having developed an accommodation to modernity entirely different than our own. Wait until we get to Southeast Anatolia, which (unlike the Northeast) is still relatively highly populated. It is very interesting.
So, many thanks for bringing this place to us, in some ways a frontier, while yet being so central to the history of Europe and Asia. And thanks for the information you have provided which is so enlarging of the visual experience.
Neil
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
The following is a bunch of theory that you may, or may not, find interesting. If you are more interested in the pics, feel free to skip it.
Most of the readers of this travel report are, likely, from Europe or North America. The ethnic makeup of these societies is, though many of us are unaware of this, quite different from the vast majority of the rest of the planet.
Not being an ethnologist, I divide these “western” societies into two types; emigrant societies and societies with a hegemonic indigenous group. I am aware that, for academic types or for folks who are well into this sort of thing, these terms may be contentious. Let me explain them.
By emigrant societies I am referring to the New World West- principally the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (and to a lesser extent the UK). These are societies composed of populations who come from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, and who generally replaced (typically violently, but that’s another story) local indigenous populations. These societies are typically socially and geographically dynamic- that is to say, populations tend to intermarry, and to move a lot. They also tend to adopt whatever the local language is and to “Australianize” or Americanize” or whatever the local equivalent is (Brazilianize?). By historical accident, most of these societies are Anglophone, but not all- it doesn’t really matter.
The point of Brazilianizing is that Brazilian identity mostly requires speaking Portuguese, living in Brazil, and exuding a proud and intense but nonspecific national pride. Thus João Waldmann can be a Brazilian nationalist. Often, such as in the USA, it involves enthusiastically adopting a political ideology. The point is that membership of the dominant identity isn’t dependent on factors such as religion, or genetic heritage, and that it is open to all (at least theoretically). These are melting pot societies.
Societies with hegemonic indigenous groups are more common in Western Europe. All Western European societies have immigrants, but there is a “national group” (Germans, Italians, Portuguese, etc.) which are the majority in these states, and are relatively homogenous. Places like France are trickier, but basically the same. Western Europe is important because the European National State System is the Hegemonic State idea throughout the world. This fact is vastly more important, and troubling, than the people who take it for granted (us) might imagine it to be.
It works out well in Western Europe, where the national state was born, than it does in the rest of the world. This is primarily because States in Europe are older than nations. France, for example, existed long before things like literacy, mass communication, official vernacular language, and safe long distance travel. There were lots of languages and ethnic groups in France (Langue d’Oc, Langue d’Oil, Burgundians, etc) but members of these were not necessarily aware of them. Most people in the medieval Kingdom of France were basically aware that there was a King, somewhere, a local Priest, and a Knight who ruthlessly exploited them. They didn’t think much about the fact the they said “oc” instead of “oui,” because there were only two languages- the one normal people spoke, and the magical religious one the priest sometimes said stuff in (latin). Usually even the priest had no idea what he was saying. They didn’t travel much, because of unsafe roads, plague, and the most salient fact that they were illiterate serfs tied to the land who had to work all the time just to (maybe) stay alive.
I am far more concerned witht he fact that this dude is saying "give me your cow and your daughter, or I will kill you", than I am about what particular language he is saying it in.
Over the centuries, before any sort of national consciousness was achieved, the Central State “made” people living in France into Frenchmen- through media such as mass education, literacy, and conscription. Thus, today, the amazing contiguousness between France and the distribution of French people. In the west we think this is normal. It isn’t.
Most states outside Western Europe were huge, ramshackle, imperial, and had no “national project.
Nations were born before nation states, and thus you have states with loads of national groups. This wasn’t much of a problem before the 18th century, because most of these people were peasants who never went further than the next village, and were likely to think of themselves as members of a religious community rather than a national community. Greece is an excellent example. There were people who spoke Greek, and went to a Christian church. There were people who spoke Greek, and went to a Mosque. This was the source of their identity, rather than “Greekness.”
Not that these societies were trouble free. The Ottoman empire was constantly full of groups who had serious problems with the central state. These problems, however, were religious rather than national. Greek speakers who went to the Mosque didn’t usually revolt. Greek speakers who went to church often did. Sometimes people who went to Mosque revolted, but this was usually typical feudal nonsense, like some local robber baron wanting to keep all the taxes, rather than send some to Constantinople.
Ethnic problems began with the rise in power of the Western European states, whose system of social organization (national states, conscript armies, mass education, science, etc.) suddenly allowed these peripheral barbarians to abruptly move into all sorts of places all over the world and set up shop, then take over. Traditional states had to respond in order to survive, and they usually did this by trying to Modernize. Modernization usually meaning Westernization, as elites went off to study things like sciences at Heidelberg and coming back with all sorts of whack Western ideas, like the nation state. The non-elites (Armenian and Greek diasporas) for example, were also coming back to places like the Ottoman empire, with the same ideas. Hilarity ensued, naturally. Particularly since the “homelands” of these ethnic/national groups were hopelessly interpenetrated. Keep on mind that the rulers of these traditional states weren’t keen on all aspects of the modern idea. The Sultan was a big fan of properly drilled troops and modern artillery. Parliaments? Not so much. With this new found national consciousness, however, it was quickly discovered that national tradition could bolster the traditional as well as the national, particularly if directed against a “traditional” enemy.
The maelstrom of inter-ethnic violence that erupted in Anatolia in the beginning of the 20th century was the result of this perfect storm of cultural collision, misunderstanding, and cynical manipulation. It’s important to understand this background in order to make sense of what at first seems like entirely senseless bloodshed.
Let me open this section with a disclaimer, lest the ravening hordes of Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish supernationalist trolls who infest teh internets find it and immediately fill it with all sorts of nonsense about how I am a craven apologist for [insert ethnic group here] and am therefore, an excretory orifice of the highest caliber.
I love Turkey, and its people. All of them- Turks, Kurds, and Armenians. Even the Greeks. That's how Cosmopolitan. broadminded, and generally awesome that I am. I received kindness and hospitality of an unparalleled nature from all of them, at all times.
That being said, I find their total lack of charity towards each other to be irritating. They would all be much better off if they stopped worrying about each others ethnic claims, and started working together to make Turkey even better and more awesomer than it is today.
The first step necessary to achieve this is honesty, particularly about the past. I will deal with all sorts of ethnic nonsense in this section, but particularly with the Turkish brand of nonsense. Not because the Turks are worse than the others, but because they are the dominant power in the state. Thus their nonsense is the official nonsense, which is the worst kind of nonsense.
The Armenian Genocide
East Anatolia has basically no Armenians in it today. There are two explanations for this.
Explanation #1- The Armenian Story
Armenians allege that, beginning in 1915, The Ottoman government, led by a trio of clowns called Enver, Talaat, and Jemal decided to wipe out Armenians in Eastern Turkey. Because why? Because *%^$ Armenians, that's why.
They achieved this by systematically assassinating the intelligentsia in Constantinople, and then by uprooting the entire population of Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, killing loads of them outright, reducing their population centers to rubble, and sending millions of them on death marches to camps in Syria. This was all arranged by the triumvirate of Enver, Talaat, and Jemal and was a systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian nation from the face of the earth- the Twentieth centuries first genocide.
Explanation #2- The Turkish Story
The official Turkish response to these claims is basically a hostile and defensive silence, and denial. Keep in mind that "insulting Turkishness" is a crime in Turkey, and that can be "liberally" interpreted to include just about anything, like attempting to address the issue reasonably.
The unofficial Turkish response to these claims is pretty various- it can be boiled down to three strategies:
A) The "incidents of 1915" were unfortunate, but the numbers are exaggerated, and don't count as genocide. The main killers were famine, disease, and the chaos of war.
Anyway, it was the Kurds who did it.
C) There are no such people as Armenians. These are not the droids you're looking for.
Explanation #3- The Real Story
The facts are these. The official Armenian population (according to Ottoman census data, as unreliable as it is) before 1915 was around 1.2 million. After the war it was around 250,000. It is very likely that the real number of Armenians was higher, and that between 1 and one and a half million died. Some of these people did leave Turkey after the war (for obvious reasons) but the missing million didn't all leave. You also can't force march a million and a half civilians through steppe and desert in the middle of winter, without adequate provisions, and act all surprised when they start dropping like flies. Particularly the kids.
This wholesale death was certainly, if not systematic (the Ottoman empire wasn't really capable of doing anything systematically, even collecting taxes) then a happy side-effect of population removal that was unlamented by the triumvirate.
Armenians did indeed carry out atrocities against Turkish civilians- there was a revolutionary group based in Russian Armenia called the Dashnaqs that would raid across the border with the tacit consent and support of the Russians, who didn't care much for the Ottomans. Did this lead to the claimed "reign of terror?" Probably not, as the Armenian were too weak to threaten the wholesale destruction of the Turkish population. It is certainly no excuse for killing a million civilians for whom the government has responsibility, including women and children.
So both sides need to fess up. First, the Ottoman government behaved atrociously. And the Dashnaq types were no angels. Nevertheless, if what happened isn't genocide, then what is it? If we give it a different name, does that make it any less evil?
The official nonsense
A monument to "genocide" outside Ani. Genocide carried out, of course, by Armenians.
Ancient Seljuk inscriptions. Why is there a cross there, and why does this script look very much like modern Armenian? Why are you asking such awkward questions?
Obvious churches are constantly identified as Seljuk Mosques. All references to Armenians in local history are ruthlessly suppressed. I am sure that folks who wish to mark me as a pro-Armenian zealot will point out that I have included no pictures of Official Armenian Nonsense. That is because I was in Turkey. In Armenia proper there is plenty of it, including a homage in the Armenian Military Pantheon to fallen commandos of the ASALA (Armenian Secret Army to Liberate Armenia) an especially unsavoury group of terrorists who carried out several bold action in defense of oppressed Armenians, such as blowing up a bunch of French people at Orly airport in 1983. Nice.
There are, however, rays of hope in all of this mess. First off, the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople steadfastly condemns, and has always condemned, groups such as the ASALA. Additionally, in the Kars tourist office, pictures the various Armenian churches of the region, which used to be prominently displayed with plaques identifying them as mosques, have had signs taped over the word "Mosque" on the labels, replacing it with the word "Church."
Perhaps we are on the road to a reconciliation that will allow these two people, of such warmth and hospitality, to express the better angels of their nature, particularly towards each other.
Enough of the Bloviating and Speechifying. Let's return to the trip report.
Our next destination was the sleepy town of Dogubeyazit (East Beyazit, commonly called just "Beyazit.") which is nestled a few kilometers from the Iranian border, under the shadow of the famous Mount Ararat, final resting place of Noah's Ark.
First we returned to Kars. I grabbed a quick Doner from a stand where the proprieter took obvious delight in feeding an American. He kept singining "Amerika, Amerika, Hey Ho, cowboy-o!"
We took a minibus from Kars to the town of Igdir, about 2 hours and 12 lira away. At Igdir, one can catch another minibus to Beyazit. Joining us at Kars was Yavuz (a name meaning "Fierce, or Grim)- a lovely Kurdish man who had spent a few years working at a tourist resort in Antalya, on the Azure Coast, and thus spoke relatively decent English and whose cheery disposition belied his name. We spent a few hours talking to Yavuz about life, particularly his farm near Igdir, where he grows lettuce and tomatoes. Like all Kurdish men, he sported a mustache of extreme masculinity. I don't believe I saw a single post-pubescent Kurdish male without such a luxurious pornstache, and the younger Kurdish boys were desperately trying to grow them, with various rates of success.
Kurdistan, land of Facial Hair
Yavuz has, like all Kurds apparently, and uncle in Berlin.
He taught us a few words in Kurdish, such as "Thank you" (Spas), which we alter used to the amazement and delight of the locals. Basically everyone in this region is Kurdish. When arriving at Igdir, we realized that the bus stop for Beyazit was about a mile away. Yavuz hefted Ms. Justiceiro's extremely heavy bag on his shoulder, and walked a mile out of his way to show us where the bus was. It is right across from the bicycle shop.
We were, by the way, the only tourists here of any kind. People constantly stopped to stare at us, although not unkindly. Waiting for the bus to leave, we once again got tea and were unable to pay for it.
En route to Beyazit, we had a short stopover in a town called Digor. Digor is basically a palookaville in the middle of nowhere, Kurdistan. Keep in mind that I am basically weird here for a number of reasons; firstlz, I am a gavur in a land with few tourists. Also, I am a largish dude. Thirdly, I am rolling fully strapped with my cotton carrier.
Your faithfull narrator, fully strapped
Without camera mounted, the cotton carrier looks much like body armor. Which is an element of its awesomeness, in my opinion. A dickensesque street urchin type spied my breastplate, and asked me, to satisfy the growing crowd of Kurdish kids, if I was a policeman (Polis). I responded that I was a Turist. "Terrorist!"They exclaimed, eyes wide. Yavuz came to my defense. "Not terrorist! Turist!" This caused much relief.
When we finally reached Dogubeyazit (called "doh-oo-beyah-zeet" or simply "Doggy Biscuit" by the Gavur) we checked in at the hotel Tehran. 30 lira (15 euro) per night, free wifi that was actually reliable, and laundry service- 2 euro per kilo. It was wonderful to finally have unambiguously clean clothing.
The hotel Tehran also has a rooftop breakfast cafe, from whence this view:
It was in Beyazit that we discovered that Turkey was in the throes of an election. The main signs of this are party sponsored street parties and an increased police presence.
Not to get back on the ethnic soapbox again, but Kurds aren't the most popular people in Turkey. Some ultrantionalists try more Jedi mind tricks and claim that they aren't really Kurds, but "mountain Turks" who have "forgotten" their true identity. Speaking a few words of Kurdish will heartily encourage these careworn but friendly people. Give it a try.
We were in Beyazit to see two things, the Isshak Pasha Palace, and mount Ararat. This was one of about 5 photos that I had planned to take, specifically, in my mind. Particularly the Sarayi with Ararat in the background. Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating and we never did see the top of Ararat (it was cloudy, and Ararat is 5000 meters high).
Nevertheless, after a good nights sleep, we trekked the six kilometers up the hill from Beyazit to the palace of Ishak Pasha.
Beyazit is only a few kilometers from the Iranian border, and has always stood astride the silk road, which passes through an extremely narrow defile here. Thus, whoever controls the defile stands to make quite a profit on lodging, feeding, and taxing travellers on that road.
The desolate landscape around Beyazit
This route has always been important. 3,000 years ago it was held by the Urartians, a successor to the Hittite kingdom, who built a huge fortress guarding the pass, which can still be seen today.
ancient Urartian fortress
Later, the town came to be populated by Armenians and Georgians, and fell to the Ottomans in 1514.
the local Bey began to construct the palace in 1685, and it was completed in 1784 by his illustrious descendant, Ishak (Isaac), by then the family have risen in rank from Bey (locally important dude) to Pasha (really important dude). Useless for defense, it is basically a pleasure palace.
The Ishak Pasha Sarayi, with Ararat not visible
Further up the road once can see the Iranian border. On the way up, we passed an extremely large and vicious dog. After much barking and posturing, he lunged at my faithful traveling companion and prepared to bite her. I had earlier palmed a sizable rock, however, and flung it near him. On the way back down, still proud master of his domain, he studiously pretended not to notice us.
The dining hall of the palace
library
Mosque, with women gallery above
old Armenian graveyard outside the Sarayi
Ishak Pasha displayed a respect and appreciation for all his subjects that the later Turkish Republic occasionally lacked. He incorporated traditional Ottoman, Georgian, and Armenian themes int he construction of the palace.
Courtyard of the Sarayi
Walking down the hill, we heard two very weird stories.
First, we encountered a British tourist, who had just been expelled from Iran. He had spent a month there, and when he went to the local city hall to extend his visa, he and his Irish traveling companion were detained and interrogated for two days. Apparently the secret service thought he was a spy. They queried him relentlessly about where he had been around the world- particularly America.
He stated, truthfully (a mistake, I think) that he had been to France a dozen times or so. Why so many times to France? Surely, he was a spy. They couldn't seem to grasp that going from Belgium (where he lives) to France is like going from NYC to Jersey City. You don't need a passport. Especially if you are a spy. He reported the following dialogue:
Iranian Policeman (IP): Have you been to America?
British Tourist (BT): uhh, Yes. Yes I have.
IP: Where!
BT: Florida.
IP: When?
BT: Hmm. Let me think... I was twelve, so... I don't know. I was twelve.
IP: Why did you go?
BT: I was 12. My mother took me.
IP: Why did she go?
BT: It was Florida. We went to Disneyland.
IP: What is this "Disneyland?" YOU ARE A SPY!
After the two days of "interviews" they gave him 72 hours to leave the country. Needless to say, he left faster than that.
As we walked down the hill back to Beyazit, we passed the enormous military base on the outskirts of the city. I wanted to photograph it, you know, for the lulz, but the Turkish military isn't aware of the lulz and they don't look kindly at the photographing of military assets (normally relaxed, this is one area where they are distinctly not relaxed, so don't even think about it). Let me point out though, that there were dozens of heavy battle tanks ready for immediate service against, I suppose, Iran. It was awesome, all lined up and ready to roll, and unfortunately under the dour eye of guards in machine gun nests everywhere. The base is bigger than the city.
As we were strolling, some dude in a Turkish military uniform shouted "Oi!" at us. You heard right. "Oi!," not "Hello" or "merhaba." Specifially, "Oi! Where are you lot from?" in a broad Midlands accent.
We walked over to the fence and had one of the most interesting conversations of my life with him. He was 46 years old, and had been living in England since he was about 6 years old. He was now a British citizen, but still had family in Turkey, and had visited a few times during his youth. His current girlfriend suggested a holiday in Antalya to him, and it seemed a good idea. Tucked away soemwhere in hsi drawer he had his old Turkish passport, and decided to use it instead of his British one, as Brits have to pay the usual 20 pound Visa fee. Use the Turkish passport, save twenty pounds, good idea, right?
Not a good idea.
Turns out that the Turkish state regards all people holding Turkish passports as Turkish citizens (naturally). And all Turkish citizens are liable for six months of military service, usually when you are 18. Well, our new friend, living in England, had not done his military service. Up until his teens, this hadn't been a problem, but when they swiped his passport at the Antalya airport, a red flag came up on the computer screen. He was immediately arrested, given a haircut, issued a set of battle dress fatigues, enrolled in the Turkish army, and sent to Beyazit to spend six months basically digging ditches. Apparently, all the draft dodgers get sent o Beyazit, as it is considered too far from anywhere to run away from. One of his unfortunate companions was a 52 year old Bank president back in England. I asked him if he couldn't "baksheesh" his way out of it, and he replied, with a sad face, that unfortunately the Turkish Army is apparently incorruptible in this respect, which is good under most circumstances, but not this particular one.
He eventually had to leave and dig more ditches or something, so we went back to the hotel, and dinner.
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you know, I knew someone who had a similar "Iran" episode to the one you describe the British tourist had. it happened to him the year before last
you know it's not always possible to discern the point of the stubbornness of interethnic hate. I once met the mother of a son whose mutilated dead body had been mailed back home to her by his murderers in another ethnic group
Neil
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
We stayed an extra, unplanned day in Beyazit hoping for the weather to clear, but sand and mist in the high atmosphere continued to obscure Mount Ararat, and there was still much left to see, so we decided to continue on in the direction of Lake Van.
Before leaving, however, I was set upon obtaining a carpet. This has become sort of an accidental tradition for me, every time I visit a Muslim country (one that makes carpets at least, of which all the ones I have visited do) I try to obtain a relatively inexpensive ruglet as a reminder of our journey. Usually I get a small one, because they are cheaper and easier to carry.
Buying real Turkish carpets can set you back quite a lot, particularly if you are in Istanbul. There are more tourists and wealthier western buyers, the locals have more money, and the carpets have already passed through the hands of a number of middlemen, each dipping their beak.
If you happen to be in the East of Anatolia, I recommend obtaining your carpet here, and Dogubeyazit is probably the best place. There are enough tourists who come here (for Mt. Ararat) to mean that there is a decent and varied supply, and the purveyors thereof likely speak Anglish and/or German. The tourists, however, are sufficiently scance, either reigiously inclined, hippyish, or simply cheap (that would be me) to make the insane markups of Istanbul impractical.
We went to a shop called the "Local Crafts Store." It is located on the road that leads up to the Ishak Pasha Sarayi (the only road leaving the town towards Iran) about 100 meters before the city ends abruptly. You really can't miss it, it is on the right.
Outside the "Local Craft Shop"
Along the road you may be required by the locals to stop and photograph them with their work vehicles, which are ornately decorated and obviously a source of great pride.
In the Shop, the proprietor showed us a number of pieces. We ignored the really huge carpets (no money, no space in the backpack) but even the five foot by three foot silk carpets (1.8 x 1 meter) ran from $300-350. That's not bad- these were the real deal, high quality silk and extremely good workmanship. In Germany they would likely fetch a few thousand euros (this were a 3 meter by 2 meter Ikea rug can cost 175 euros). Nevertheless, I like to actually put my rugs on the floor, and silk is a little bit too nice for that. So we bought a 3 foot by two foot (1x0.6 meter) rug, out of wool, with traditional local designs incorporating the animals of Noah's ark. It set us back about 35 euros.
our Rug
A rug of this size for that money is a rather good price. Granted, my hetero life partner's mother comes from the Algarve, thus her genetic heritage is likely at least 40% North African (I myself think it concentrates in the booty region). Whether this is relevant to her negotiating skills is not scientifically proven, but I know that in Morocco, whenever the merchants offered me a price, she would point out that she is Portuguese, and they would apologize, and begin the process of haggling again, with half the price knocked off even before the fighting began. The point is that having a Moorish chick with me might mean I got slightly better prices than you can, but still. Even at twice the price this is an extremely inexpensive amount to pay.
Lake Van lies to the southwest of Beyazit, and there are no North/South rail lines in Eastenr Anatolia. Nor do the big buses serve Beyazit, so we hopped into a mini bus and headed off.
The View from our Minibus
Thalatta! Thalatta!
Heading back towards the center of Anatolia, the land is really quite desolate. As a historical side note, at some point we crossed the route taken by Xenophon's 10,000 as they fought their way back home from the center of the Persian Empire. Having been hired as mercenaries by Cyrus the younger, their Employer lost, and perished in, the battle of Cunaxa in 401 BC.
It's off topic, but the Anabasis is one of the greatest adventure stories of all time, with the added bonus of actually having happened, so indulge me if you will.
Greek Hoplites were exceptionally excellent soldiers, as so entertainingly depicted in the film the 300. As fanciful as it was, it really wasn't that far off in its depiction of the Spartans' martial abilities. After ignominiously expelling Xerxes army from Attic Greece (Greece in Asia Minor remained Persian) the cities of Hellas took to hiring their hoplites out as mercenaries. Cyrus the Younger, a Satrap in Asia Minor, and according to Xenophon (a foot soldier with exceptional writing skills who joined the expedition), the best of all the Persians, decided to unseat his brother Artaxerxes II, and hired 10,000 hoplites to help him accomplish this feat. With these ten thousand, and around 80,000 other troops (of the typical undisciplined Persian type) he advanced to near Modern Baghdad, were he confronted the Army of Artaxerxes, led by the Satrap Tissaphernes. The Greek Hoplites compose the right flank of the Army. In the ensuing battle, Cyrus the Younger was killed.
On the right wing, however, the Greek mercenaries were triumphant. That was the good news. The bad news was that their employer was dead, they were thousands of miles from Greece, and the locals had become distinctly hostile. Here is Xenophon's description from The March Up Country
The Greeks, with their democratic natures, then debate the proposal amongst themselves, and decide not to give up their arms. As Clearchus stated "If we are to be friends with the King, we shall be better friends with our arms than if we surrender them to another. And if we are to fight the King, we will fight better with our weapons than without them. Clearchus knew that the King wanted to destroy them, though they would have been equally willing to fight for him as against him, as their previous contract had ended with Cyrus' death.
Through treachery, and under a herald of truce, Tissaphernes had Clearchus and the entire corps of generals executed, an astounding sacrilege (granted, the Spartans had killed the heralds of Xerxes, also a sacrilege, so some said they had it coming). After the death of their Generals, the army elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and they began their Anabasis (march to the sea). Along the way they were confronted by ceaseless attacks of Persians and other barbarians, such as the Carduchians on the banks of the Aras river, which we also had to cross on our way to Van.
The kind of landscape the Ten Thousand marched through, though likely with less cows.
After several months, and with only 6,000 men remaining alive, having defeated everything thrown at them, they reached Trabzon, and the sea. The remarkable performance of the 10,000 eventually led Phillip of Macedon, and his son Alexander, to realize that a truly large and supported army of Greeks could break the Persian empire completely.
When we arrived in Van, we too saw "the sea," although we travelled by coach and were not pursued by vicious Persians.
Lake Van stretches unto the Horizon
Van city is a large and vibrant place, with around 500,000 souls. It boasts a very particular geophysical quirk, the Rock of Van, which has made it a place of settlement since the 9th century BC, when it was an Urartian capital.
The Rock of Van is a giant chunk of stone that rises, much like Gibraltar, straight up out of the surrounding plains.
View from the Rock
Right on the shore of the lake, it is a natural place to fortify, and almost impossible to take without a lengthy and bloody siege. There has been some sort of castle here for almost the last 3,000 years. Xerxes himself ordered an inscription, one of only about a dozen or so in the world, carved into the side of the Rock.
Inscription of Xerxes the Great
Traded back and forth between Persians and Turks, it became definitively Ottoman only in 1570, though the local population was overwhelmingly Armenian. Old Van lay directly beneath the Rock, and was devastated by the Russians in the first world war.
The gently undulating landscape below the Rock seems to belong to a long vanished hittite city, whereas in fact it is less than a century since this wasteland was a thriving metropolis.
The new City of Van is built about 3 miles away from the lake.
The rock is now a sort of park, surrounded by locals out for a picnic. You can easily, as we did, spend a day climbing it and exploring all of its nooks and crannies. It was truly one of the most pelasurable days of the whole trip. The air is warm, but the lake breeze is refreshing, the locals are friendly, and the views are spectacular.
Spectacular, and a bit nerve racking
The Rock, however, is extremely high up. I would like neither to attack it, nor fall off of it. And there are no safety rails, so be cautious.
Your faithful narrator performs the tai chi manouver called "swooping eagle devours mountain goat"
Old Van from the top of the Rock
View of New Van
New Van
New Van isn't that spectacular, it is modern and (unusually), laid out on a grid. We stayed at the Buyuk Asu hotel (50 euros, modern with excellent toilets). We did, however, discover a few things while watching the Turkish language TV stations. The election was heating up, and riots were breaking out all over Kurdistan. It seems that, pretty much right after we left a city, it seemed to erupt. I don't know why I have that effect on people.
Van is now mainly Kurdish, and the Kurdish political party is strong there (this party was banned a few days later, which led to serious disturbances, particularly in Diyarbakir, which we didn't visit.) The flesh pressing was in full swing, and the streets were crowded with people. Although given to roaring in approval at the pronouncements of Kurdish politicians, they were quite well disciplined. Let me point out that, despite this being a time of extreme tension, we were in no danger. Everyone was solicitous and helpful. It took us about a week to even figure out what was going on.
Political Demonstration, under our Hotel Balcony
The food in Van, by the way, is excellent. Particularly a restaurant called "Kebabistan," which had the best Ayran ever.
Another fine Beyti Kebab. Revolution or no, one has to eat
Next post, our trip to Akdamar, yet another of the photos I had been waiting to take for years.
Lake Van is a strange body of water indeed. First off, it's big- the biggest lake in Turkey. It is 75 miles (119km)wide at its broadest point, with an average depth of 561 feet (171 meters), although it reaches up to three times that depth in places.
It is also endorheic, meaning it has not outlets. Countless rivers and streams flow into it, but nothing flows out. This, given its regular evaporation, has made the lake rather alkaline- its excellent for washing clothes as it has a natural detergent effect.
This effect is not so good for fish- Lake Van has only one species of fish in it, the Pearl Mullet. This is also the only place that this fish is found. The water changes color constantly, depending on the depth, the angle of the sun, cloud cover, and perhaps the whimsy of the gods. It is truly a beautiful body of water.
Van to Akdamar
We got up at 9 AM and headed down to the minibus center. If you want to get to Akdamar Island, the best way to do it is to catch a bus to Geves. The highway runs along the south shore of the lake, and you will pass right by the docks where you can get a ferry.
The Akdamar Ferry
It wasn't high season, so the boat wasn't running that frequently. We had to wait an hour or so before it departed. I don't know if there is a schedule or not, or if they just wait until they have a certain number of people. While we were waiting we were joined by about a dozen Kurdish ladies with giant thermoses, picnic gear, and a passel of kids. Also joining the group were a young "modern" Turkish couple, meaning no headscarf, jeans, and a rather mild form of snuggling.
Akdamar Island (known to Armenians as Akhtamar or Ahtamar) is famous primarily for an isolated church. Being a safe refuge, the island was for a time the residence of an Armenian King (the euphoniously named King Gagik) and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross was the palace church. It was constructed in the mid 900's.
The Island itself is covered with apricot trees, which were in bloom when we arrived. Sweet smelling, and idyllic.
One can enter the church as well, although it is mostly empty. It was active until 1915 as the center of an Armenian Catholicos and a home to quite a few monks. The monks were killed and the monastic building later destroyed. Although the Turkish government is now committed to saving what remains (which is quite a lot, really) it has been officially a museum since 2005, which irritates some Armenians (they wish ti to be a church).
Inside the Church are quite a few frescos, mostly damaged, but still recognizable.
Outside there are numerous reliefs carved onto the walls, representing biblical scenes like David and Goliath, and Jonah being swallowed by the whale, although the whale looks suspiciously dog like.
David and Goliath
OK, now for the money shots, so to speak:
Church w/ picnicking Kurds
It is super late, so I will add some more tomorrow.
Thanks Nikolai. We all like to be original artists and whatnot, but occasionally a postcard shot is required. Also, sometimes cliches are cliches because, well, they should be. The first shot of the Akdamar Church with the mountains behind is one of my favorites from the trip.
Akdamar Island's church is on a flattish area, but there is also a hill to the west of this area. It is supposedly fenced off, but there is a hole in the fence that you could literally drive a truck through, so walk on up. It is the best spot to get the lake, church, and the mountains behind.
Above the fence and up the hill
The last boat from the Island departs at, If I recall correctly, 6 PM. Check this when you get there, it could be critically important. There aren't much in the way of facilities on the islands (other than remarkably clean bathrooms) and Anatolia can get extremely cold at night, so I wouldn't want to camp out. There is a sort of Park ranger here, so I imagine if you do want to stay, you'll have to hide yourself on the far side of the hill. Moonlight shots of the church could be interesting....
Regardless, we had to leave at around 3PM, as we had a long and rather circuitous journey to our next destination. The dock for the boat back is just below the church.
When you get back to the mainland, you walk across the highway and simply wait for a bus to pick you up. Or some other vehicle, which is what happened to us.
We waited for about an hour for a bus, when something looking like a minibus stopped, and we and the "modern couple" headed towards it. Climbing aboard, we realized that it was empty, containing only a devastatingly handsome driver with amazing silver eyes (no metaphor, they really were silver- this part of the world has the widest variety of eye color I have ever seen) and his companion. They refused to take money, which was when I realized that we were basically being given a ride by some (again) friendly strangers.
We came to understand that they would take us to Geves, where buses are more frequent. We got to Geves, and drove around for a while, talking to various weird dudes, and getting a look at the statue of the Lake Van Monster (who looks, unsurprisingly, much like Nessie from Scotland). Then we headed back to the highway, as they had decided to go back towards Van and drop us off (despite the fact it was out of the way) at Edremit. Apparently, they thought we would have to wait too long for the bus.
They drove like bats out of hell for about 20 minutes, then suddenly slowed down and put on their seatbelts, telling us to do the same and asking if we had our passports. (apparently, there was a police car behind us for a few kilometers). After the cops took a different direction, off came the seatbelts and back up went the speedometer. A note on seatbelts, they aren't much in favor in Anatolia. I suppose wearing a seatbelt indicates a few things that are not so good from their point of view. If you wear a seatbelt you are either insulting the driver by indicating that you think he will crash, or attempting to avoid the kismet Allah has decreed for you, as if you crash, it was what Allah willed anyway. Trying to circumvent God's plans is as unnatural as it is pointless and ultimately foolish.
Eventually, the dropped us off at Edremit, which is exactly nowhere, waved goodbye, and sped off back the way they came, once again refusing to accept anything but our verbal thanks.
After a while we finally got on a minibus heading back to Van. Along the way we:
-picked up a gardener, with his tools and a box full of flowers.
-dropped off a bundle of letters at a roadside cafe.
-picked up some money at another roadside cafe
-dropped off the money at yet another roadside cafe
-had a stop and chat with a grizzled old man by the side of the road
-stopped and admonished kids for playing ball to close to the highway
In Turkey, the Dolmus is not just a manner of transportation, it is also a postal service, bush telegraph, mobile banking system, and inter-village moral instruction service. Every Dolmus is, more or less, a rolling village. Much better than renting a car, despite the inconveniences.
Back in Van, much later than we had anticipated, we looked for a bus to Batman, a town in Southeast Anatolia of no interest whatsoever, but which is a gateway to the Arab sections of the country.
A comfortable, but rather slow ride
The bus for Batman left at 8 PM, so we had two hours to kill, which we did by drinking strong coffee and eating sweet Baklava, and taking the inevitable photograph of Christiano Ronaldo.
Even more famous than SIMAO!
Our ultimate destination was a little village called Hasankeyf, about which more anon.
The trip to Batman took a little longer than expected, due to, I suppose, civil unrest. Diyarbakir was experiencing its third day of riots, the Kurdish Party (we discovered later) had just been banned, and the Jandarma were out in force. Just after dark we were stopped at a roadside checkpoint, all the men in the bus decamped (including me) and we were frisked for weapons. We were getting deep into Kurdistan, so two hours later we stopped again, only this time the personal searches were far from rudimentary, and they went through the bags as well. On top of a platform above us three Militiamen kept machine guns constantly trained on us as we went through the rigamarole.
We ended up getting to the Otogar in Batman, or rather, many miles outside of Batman, just after midnight. It was here we had our first public transportation hiccup. As we were pndering what to do, all the Servis minibuses to the center of town departed, leaving us alone with a rather mangy cat, a retired dude who apparently lives at the bus station, or uses it to avoid his wife, and two sleepyish security guards.
The retired man had (surprise surprise) spent 26 years in Duisberg, and informed us in excellent German that the next bus to Hasankeyf was at 5 AM. A taxi into Batman would be wicked expensive (Taxi drivers in Turkey are ravenous vultures, apparently, almost without exception, as all honest God fearing folk use dolmuses).
We gloomily prepared to spend a night on the hard floor of the Batman bus station, unfed, unshowered, and somewhat less than totally content. We had not reckoned, however, on the persistence of Turkish hospitality even in the most extreme circumstances.
The two security guards opened up the office of the bus company they worked for, and laid out some pillows and blankets on the office couch for us. They then dissapeared, returning about ten minutes later with bread, cheese, veggies, and tea.
Our random benefactors
They asked us whether we wanted to take the 5 AM bus, or the 7 AM bus, and promised to wake us up in time for departure. After an hour or so watching Turkish TV and "conversing" after a fashion, they departed, and we sank into blissful sleep on the surprisingly comfortable couches. The next morning we were duly woken up at 6 AM, our bags placed onto the appropriate bus, and off we went.
Hasankeyf
Despite the fact that the existence of Hasankeyf is alluded to as far back as 1800 BC, it isn't a big place. It's interesting, however, for a number of reasons. It has quite a few mosques of delicate character (having once been important), and it sits astride the Tigris river, a short distance from its headwaters. This is both a blessing, as it made the town what it was, and a curse, as a current dam project means that this villlage, occupied for the last 3,000 years, will soon be underwater. Go and see it now, while you still have time. Unfortunately, we had crap weather (for shooting). But you no what a grey overcast sky means, right? Time for the black and white.
Tigris River, with remains of old bridge
The first order of business was finding breakfast, despite the fact that it was early and nothing much was happening in the town. We asked a guy on the main street, and he went to a restaurant with a river view, which the owner opened up for us. We had a remarkable breakfast, as well as a chat with the owner's son (named Umut) before he headed off to school. Most of the people left in Hasankeyf are Arabs. These were the first Arabs in Turkey that we encountered.
The restaurant owner let us leave our heavy backpacks at his place, and we wandered around the village with only our photo gear.
The village has basically one main street, behind which are the ruins of a mosque/medresseh complex and the opening to a sort of canyon.
Along the water are some beautiful minarets.
The Canyon has some cliff dwellings similar to Cappadocia, many of which are still used by shepherds, goats and sheep being the primary industry here (with some tourism).
After exploring the back of Hasankeyf, we decided to take a look at the Tigris, which is undoubtedly quite scenic here, although a far cry from the wide and massive river which flows through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf.
It is also, being mostly meltwater here, ridiculously cold.
Nevertheless, we had to give it a try.
The Tigris is, in a pinch, an excellent place to wash your socks.
Returning to the Cafe, we picked up our bags from the owner and his family (one of whom looks like a Turkish/Arab Elvis) and set of to find the bus to Midyat, home of one of Anatolia last pockets of native Christians.
Your final shot of it through the apricot blossoms is breathtaking!
Neil
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
+1
Great trip, pics, narrative. EXCELLENT JOURNEYS post!
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We are still a ways from the end Andy, so keep a few more minutes free.:D
Turkey's most well known ethnic group, other than Turks themselves of course, are the Kurds, followed closely by the Armenians and Greeks (ironic, as there are hardly any left). Having passed the Tigris river at Hasankeyf, we were still technically in Kurdistan, but the overwhelming Kurdishness of the rest of the Southeast began to increasingly fade. Now more and more of the people we were meeting were Semitic.
I use the term Semitic advisedly, although most folks would simply refer to them as "Arabs," and indeed the bulk of them are Arabs. Nevertheless, there many who are not.
Although trying to figure out who is who often leaves me as confused looking as that kid on the left.
Westerners are used to hearing the word "Semitic" only in the context of Anti-Semitism, which is a strange word. After all, antisemitism is really only used in reference to hatred of Jews. I suppose "Anti-Jewism" wasn't euphonious or psuedoscientific sounding enough for its adherents, so antisemitism it was. Neverthell, though Hitler proudly claimed to be antisemitic, I seriously doubt he thought much about, say, extending the holocaust to Nestorian Christians speaking Aramaic and living in the levant.
The Semitic peoples, speaking Semitic languages, are a varied group indeed, including Berbers, Arabs, Jews, Ethiopians, and even the Maltese. The map below indicates Semitic languages in orange:
The main Semitic peoples in Turkey are Jews, the Doenme (a strange group of crpyto-Jewish sabbateans, about which we will not discuss), Arabs (everybody knows who they are) and Assyrians. The peoples we encountered during the next stage of our trip were Arabs and Assyrians.
Arabs
I don't think I need to go on too much about Arabs, except to point out that not all Arabs are Muslims. This statement shouldn't be controversial, but it sort of is. The vast majority of Arabs are indeed Muslim, but many are not. Arab culture is based around a language, Arabic, and there are Arab Catholics (quite a few of them, actually, particularly in Lebanon), other Arab Christians, and even Arab Jews- this is perhaps surpising to the reader, but many Mizrahi Jews, Jews from North Africa and the fertile crescent (as opposed to Sephardi, who come from Spain and Portugal, and the Ashkenazi, who come from Central and Eastern Europe) self identify as Arab Jews and see no contradiction in this.
Assyrians
Unlike the Maronites of Lebanon, Assyrians are not simply "Arab Christians," despite the fact that they are often misidentified as such. Their language sounds like Arabic (much as Dutch sounds much like German), but then again, Hebrew sounds a lot like Arabic, despite the fact that the speakers often look different. Assyrians speak Aramaic (or Syraic, depending on who you ask), the modern descendant of the language of Jesus (as they constantly point out), with its own script, which reads right to left, as do Hebrew and Arabic. I think Gene Roddenberry may have ripped this off to form the basis of the Klingon Alphabet.
Aramaic inscription on a tomb
Assyrians are connected, albeit via a rather crooked path, to the Assyrian empire of ancient Mesopotamia. Maybe.
Their Religion is Christian, although theologically distinct from both Orthodox and Catholic. They split off from these branches after the Council of Ephesus in the 4th century, due to some quibling over the exact distinctiveness of the separation between Jesus' human and divine nature. Apparently, they think Jesus was more divine than human (Unlike the Arians, who went waay off the rails), whereas the Ethiopians think he is more human than divine, though not to the extent Arius did, although more so than the Assyrians' main theologian, Diodorus of Tarsus (I could be wrong on this, it is all inside baseball to me and my head is starting to hurt) and the Greeks and Latins agreed not to talk too specifically about it, although later fell to killing each other over the letter "i" (homoousian vs. homoiousian) all this bickering had the effect of creating a lot of bloodletting and handing over the entire middle east to the Muslims, who had the tidy solution to the problem of not thinking Jesus divine at all.
Tur Abdin is the name of the Syraic/Assyrian enclave in Southeastern Turkey, which used to be full of Assyrian Christians. Their numbers have dwindled in the last century (down to about 5,000), as it has become easier to immigrate to the west. Additionally, even as far back as Ottoman times every "outrage" against Muslims by the west, or defeat of the Ottomans by Christian powers usually brought vengeance dealt out to these Christians, seen (wrongly) as either allies, sympathizers, or catspaws of Western Christian (the difficult history of these people with other Western Christian groups is simply not recognized by most Muslims, much as we do, they regard the other religion as an undifferentiated mass).
There remains, however, a tenacious community of indigenous Christians, and it is yet too early to write them off. We first encountered them in the town of Midyat.
Midyat
Midyat, once an almost purely Christian town, is no majority Muslim. However, the old city is a sort of Christian preserve, and they are very much out and about.
Chickens are, also, very much out and about
You are immediately aware that you have entered another part of Turkey. Both the people and the buildings are quite different. Midyat seems to be constructed out of one type of sand colored stone, in a truly Levantine rather than Anatolian style. It reminds me a great deal of Malta (who are, interestingly, these people's linguistic cousins).
Unfortunately, yet again, the sky was dismal. Nevertheless, there were good shots to be had.
local kids staring at us
Across the fields towards Mar Gabriel
Midyat has several churches, but its most significant religious site is the ancient monastery of Mar Gabriel, founded in 397 AD. It houses 3 monks, 13 nuns, and 12,000 bodies in an ossuary, as well as an extensive graveyard. If you would like to visit, simply walk up to the gate and knock.
We were greeted by a friendly priest, who showed us around the interior of the monastery.
Monastary Church
Bible in Aramaic
Walking back across the fields we returned to the old city, where we came across some ladies at one of the areas traditional communal ovens. Each street used to have one, and the ladies (never the men) cook bread for their families in it, and of course share gossip and talk about village life.
Ms. Justi and the Christian Ladies
Of course, I asked them if they were baking bread, and of course they ran back into the house and brought us a hot loaf. It was amazing- round, dense, moist, and tasting the way bread ought to taste.
Taking our leave of these friendly women, we then sought out a church located nearby, within the old city.
There we had a chat with an English speaking man, who induced one of the Assyrian students to open the church up for us.
While at the Church of St. Simona we had an interesting chat with the English speaking man. The Turkish government doesn't trust the Assyrians because they aren't Turkish, and their patriarch is in Damascus. Kurds don't get along with them because they have a sort of traditional enmity (Kurdish shepherds, Assyrian cityfolk, all that stuff), and resentment amongst the local Arabs has grown with the growing predation (from their point of view) of the west upon the Arab muslim heartland. It's the old story- Assyrians are blamed for the sins of the Americans and Europeans. Why? Because they are all Christians. The irony is that much of Europe is no longer Christian in any meaningful sense, and that Americans have, in general, no idea that these people exist. So their are squeezed from all sides.
Our faith, in the west, is an easy thing to bear. It slips away from you like an old winter coat, its passing so light as to hardly be noticed. But in Tur Abdin, being a Christian is a meaningful thing. It entails suffering. It demands sacrifice. It is anything but simply a habit, or cultural relic. The community may, or may not, be dying. But the faith of the community is most certainly alive.
As we prepared to leave, the man told us his name was Isadodu, Aramaic for "Christ is risen." "And it is true," He added, with a touch of defiance. "Christ is risen. Perhaps this makes some people not so glad. But it makes me glad."
As we left St. Simona, it had grown somewhat late and the sky had begun to take on an ominous hue.
Although I didn't know it yet, I was about to experience my first sandstorm- fortunately it was a brief one, and we weathered it inside an internet cafe. During a lull I briefly stepped outside to take this shot, which, I feel the need to add, is straight out of the camera, without color correction. It really looked like this, like a giant orange julius colored filter had taken over the whole world.
That bread is awesome!
After a sound night's sleep at our hotel, we emerged onto the street in order to catch the bus to Mardin- like Midyat a center of Assyrian Christians, but somewhat rather well known. After the sand storm of the previous night the cobblestones and cars were coated with a thick layer of dust. As we walked toward the station, raindrops as fat as thumbnails began to drop all around us, the grey skies above began to spit out half a weeks accumulation of sand. On the one hand, this made the journey a bit less pleasant than previously. On the other hand, I hoped that the change in weather would herald an end to the hazy skies that had plagued my photographic opportunities for days.
All sleepiness was banished by the violent neon colors of the minivan to Mardin.
subtlety is not an element of the Turkish aesthetic
Mardin is the last town before the beginning of what was once called "Araby" - the old town skirts a ridge that marks the end of the Anatolian Plateau, and below spreads the broad expanse of the Syrian plain. But before you can look into the distance towards Damascus, you have to catch a bus from the relatively new and unattractive new town up the hill. If you are in doubt about where to go, ask for "Cumhuriyet (republic) Square," its the center of the old town.
The plains of Syria
The town is principally Arabic in ethnic makeup (this is what most folks in the street are speaking), and although once a Christian center, is now mainly Muslim. Intermittent persecution and well of relatives in America have drawn most of the Assyrian population away. Their churches, for the moment, remain.
Friendly local
Mardin Fortress and Zinciriye Medresseh
Just below the fortress is an old Muslim religious school, which has a cafe from which you can get a spectacular view of the town and the plains.
Interior Courtyard of Zinciriye Medresse
I would highly recommend having a "Mardin Style" coffee in the Medresse's courtyard cafe. The prices are expensive (though normal for Germany), but the mood is peaceful (the courtyard was intended to give imams in training a foretaste of the paradise that awaited faithful Muslims) and the view is well worth it.
A fountain in a recessed alcove emits a stream of cool water which flows into a pool in the middle of the courtyard, around which are an array of colorful flowers.
Once again I was reminded of Central Asia, specifically that pools of Bukhara.
From the Medresse one can descend the winding streets down the hillside, which are full of local shops. For the first time in a week we began to see foreign travelers, who aren't thick on the ground, but do drop in. The upside is that you can stock up on Kitsch (which I unashamedly love) and some signs are in English.
Mardin is famous for soap
Mardin, not being big, required only an afternoon to see, so we boarded a bus at around 4:30, and headed off to Urfa. Leaving town, the bus dropped down the steep hills, and followed the north edge of the Syrian plain to the west.
The road from Mardin
Turkey owns a very small strip of the flatlands here, in what is geographically and ethnically (but not politically) Syria. The border is a few kilometers away, the same border that, a few months after our return, tens of thousands of Syrians would cross while fleeing from government persecution. Most of the folks on the other side of the border are related to the inhabitants of the Turkish side, keep in mind that the "border" is less than a century old, the two areas where unified within living memory, and most of the locals have traditionally herded sheep in a semi nomadic fashion.
The Anatolian Plateau and the Syrian Plain
Northern Syria belies the image of Arabia as a desert land, it is incredibly green and remarkably fertile. Also surprising is how stark the contrast between Anatolia and Arabia is- as seen in the photograph above, Asia minor ends with startling abruptness.
Next up, Glorious Urfa!
The bus arrived at Urfa at around 7 in the evening. Urfa was, mostly, unknown to me- I knew it was mostly not Turkish, that it was big, and rather well known in Turkey itself. What surprised me was the air of prosperity and relative modernity I saw as we entered the outskirts of Urfa. The buildings are clean and modern. The streets are well paved, with very little visible trash, and well tended medians often with flowers in them. It sort of looks like Portugal.
The Otogar is, as usual, way out of the center of town. It is a huge and modern station, resembling an airport in the west. There are restaurants, gleaming marble floors, and multiple levels. Figuring out where the buses to the center are isn't hassle free. We wandered around the Otogar for a bit, and finally found a section for "county buses" in English. Figuring that these were the locals, we asked around for the "old city" (Eski Sehir) in Turkish. This is a mistaka, as there is a rather large and important city called Eskisehir (named, somewhat less than originally, "old city") about 400 km away. Folks kept directing us back to the long distance buses on the first level.
If in doubt as to how to get to the center of any city, the best idea is to ask for Ataturk Bulvari (Ataturk Boulevard). Every city has one. Even if a village has only one street, that street will be named Ataturk Bulvari. It's usually in the center, as well. Scratch that. Ataturk Bulvari is always in the center.
The buses to get to the center of (Sanli)Urfa aren't in the bus station. You have to catch a local city bus. Walk out of the bus station to the road that curves up the hill (the station is sort of built into a hill.) Heading "up" the hill, cross the road and catch the bus on the right side of the street. This will take you to the last stop about 20-25 minutes later, which is the center. (The stop is the Merkezi)
Having spent an hour figuring this out, we arrived downtown after night had begun to fall. We had picked out a hotel (Otel Bokay) from the Lonely Planet, but it was full, so we ended up staying at the Ipek Palas hotel near the medical center. It's a bit odd looking, but it is cheap, and there is a laundry shop right next door.
After ditching our stuff in the room, we went in search of dinner. Unlike Midyat and Mardin, which are culturally more Arabic/Assyrian than "normal Turkey," but still not exactly "Middle Eastern," Old Urfa clearly belongs to the Middle East. The small streets reminded me very much of Morocco.
On the Gloriousness of Urfa
The official name of the city is Sanliurfa (pronounced "Shan-lee-oor-fah). This means "Glorious (Sanli) Urfa. It was given the name "Glorious" by the Turkish parliement in 1984 in recognition of its heroic resistance to the French during their attempt to partition (with the other great powers) Turkey following the first world war. Locals, in fact everything that isn't an official document, still refer to it as "Urfa." Even the long distance buses have "Urfa" or "S.Urfa" on their dashboard signs.
Urfa's first gloriousness is mythical in nature. According to Genesis, the prophet Abraham was born in the city of "Ur of the Chaldees." This city's exact location is a matter of debate, but traditional Muslim and Jewish opinion holds that it is, in fact, the city of Urfa. You may know the name of the city better in its Byzantine guise- Edessa.
Abraham's a pretty big deal- being the founder of Monotheism and the only religious element that Muslims, Christians, and Jews can agree on. The cave where he is reputed to be born is now a Mosque, and a center of pilgrimage.
The cave us located within a rather large park on the edge of the old town. The park is well tended, crowded with pilgrims, and full of beautiful plants, trees, and flowers which were in full bloom.
The Mosque of Abraham
Strangely, given the importance of Abraham to the three religious traditions of the West, and the fact that all of them identify this as Abraham's birthplace, the pilgrims seem to be entirely Muslim. I saw no Christian or Jewish pilgrims at all. This is particularly curious for Jewish tourists, as Abraham is important to them in a way that far exceeds his place in Christianity or Islam.
The cave itself is located within the cliff that forms the old "rock" of Edessa (upon which is the ancient Roman/Byzantine citadel site). Women and men enter separately, and view the cave separately as well.
The cave itself is not a great place to take pictures, although no one really minds that you take pictures. In general, Turkish Muslims are pretty chill about Gavurs coming into their Mosques and nosing about. In North Africa, Mosques aren't so welcoming (and are typically prohibited to non-Muslims).
So the legend runs that Abraham was born in this cave. His mother was hiding here because the local King, one Nimrod, had been told by his astrologers that a baby would shortly be born who would destroy pagan idolatry, of which Nimrod and (naturally) the pagan priests were quite fond. Therefore Nimrod ordered all newborn children to be put to death.
As Abraham matured into a young man, God revealed himself to him, whereupon Abraham began to preach the oneness of Elyon (God most high) to the Urfans. Nimrod was having none of that. According tot he Jewish midrash, he then constructed a giant furnace to throw Abraham into. Other accounts say that he built a massive bonfire, the largest that the world had seen to that point, and threw Abraham from the heights of Urfa's cliff into the fire- whereupon God immediately changed the fire into water, and the logs of the fire into carp. This pool of water and its carp exist even unto today, in the form of the pool of Abraham.
The pool of Abraham
After touring the pool, and feeding the carp (a source of mighty baraka) we ascended the cliff to the site of the old citadel. The view of Old Urfa from there is spectacular.
The most prominent remains atop the citadel mount are the "columns of Nimrod," which are actually Roman in origin.
The Author as Hercules
More on Urfa tomorrow....
Say, did you have a CP on your lens all the time? Most of the images look CP-ed...
Hey Nik,
I did mostly shoot with a CP, except when the weather was super hazy for the days in Dogubeyazut and around that time. I pretty much use one all the time for outdoor shots.
I also process in lightroom (I shoot only RAW) and tend to go for the color slide look.